The Watchtowers of Rota
by StinkoGingko
Summary: Six years after Tony leaves NCIS, Gibbs's old team must reassemble to solve a shocking crime.  Tony/Ziva, some McAbby
1. Chapter 1 Things have changed

In Abby's lab, as in Ducky's, there is a bright plastic frame. Its digital images change every 20 seconds or so. Gibbs has learned to not look at the frame, but he can't help noticing that in just the few weeks since the frame's arrived, the images have already been updated. The images have all the flaws of the amateur and over-fond photographer. But they show an attractive family just the same. Most of the pictures are of father and daughter: on the beach, washing a car, watching TV in matching football gear. Since Abby isn't in her lab this morning, he has an easier time of not looking than usual. When the slideshow has run through twice, he gives up waiting on Abby.

He has a conference scheduled in MTAC at 10, but when he steps in he realizes that the director's weekly meeting with assorted SAICs is still in progress. He stays back in the shadows where he can see without being seen.

This sort of administrative chore is why he's glad he's never held a real management post. Having to listen, day after day, to the SAIC Naples complain about funding is more than he could bear. Somehow the improved technology makes it worse. Once upon a time it would be grainy footage, just one screen. Now it's tight and bright and alongside the giant noggin of Bob Williams, SAIC Brussels, are the smaller noggins of the other Europe SAICs.

And then the screen changes, Bob gets tucked back into the corner, and DiNozzo, SAIC Rota, is now eight times life size in better-than-live color and definition. Just over his shoulder is a picture frame that distractingly changes images every few seconds, and occasionally gives off a tiny squawk. Beyond that is blue sky and Quonset huts.

"…the usual stuff, but our biggest ongoing problem is still the attacks on our personnel by locals. Nothing real serious yet, but they seem to be escalating in frequency and severity. We had two carjackings last week."

"Organized? Are you catching the bad guys?"

"Doesn't seem organized at this point. We've caught a few, but it doesn't matter. We're basically running a catch and release program here."

"How are things with the LEOs?"

"Friendly enough, but LEOs don't decide who gets prosecuted, and there are some real resource problems. Also, the city's really dependent on the base, which makes things very touchy."

"I don't suppose you've done anything to make anyone any more touchy."

"I may have misused a bullfighting metaphor the other day."

"Stick to English. You have enough trouble with that."

"Roger. Any chance you can help me out on the manpower issue, sir? I've had one open slot for nine months."

"You let him go, DiNozzo."

"And I'd still do it even if I knew you'd never let me fill the slot. So will you let me fill the slot? Especially since I've got two other people on detail in the agent afloat program."

"You said yourself you're dealing with mostly routine stuff."

"But I have the remainder of the Fifth coming in next week—all the ships that have been over in Turkey cleaning up after the earthquake. They're 12 weeks overdue, so they and their tenders will be in Rota for a while. And everyone's going to be _very_ happy to be ashore. I'll have my hands full. There's only so many cantinas and so many senoritas in Rota."

"Sounds like you need MPs more than agents."

"I don't have many MPs either, director."

"I'll see if I can round up a few for you."

"I appreciate that, but if they can't speak Spanish, don't bother. I can play ugly American flatfoot without any help."

"I'm sure you can." The other SAICs disappear, and for a moment only DiNozzo is left. "You'll be getting some new directives shortly. Let me know if you've got any questions."

"I can't wait."

The director gives the cut sign to the conference operator, and just before DiNozzo disappears, he looks at someone off screen and says, "Do you_ ever _knock?"

Gibbs comes down the steps, and Vance turns to him. "What can I do for you, Jethro?"

"I've got a conference with State."

Vance smiles. "I'm always happy to keep State waiting. The room's all yours."

It takes the conference tech a moment to bring up the Assistant Deputy Secretary of State for Upper Nowheresville. His eyes are deceiving him, but when he looks at the blank screen he thinks he can see an afterimage of DiNozzo, the big smiling head, the bland government background. They have not spoken for six years.


	2. Chapter 2 Eastern exposure

When they first came to Rota, they had rented a condo on the western side of town, far from the base but in the newer resort area. It had made for a pleasant lifestyle, with the beach on the doorstep, but it was expensive and otherwise inconvenient, and after the baby came they rented the top two stories of a house in the older part of town from two retired professor-types from England. Their flat is a recent addition to an older home, so it has larger rooms and unobstructed views. The bedrooms are on the third floor, the living spaces and a terrace on the fourth. The unobstructed views aren't great, as Rota is flat, and the best indication you can get on most days that the ocean is out there is a vague blue haze. But the eastern exposure makes it hard to sleep in too late.

This morning—a morning perhaps ten days after the SAIC teleconference—the sun has risen far enough to lighten the room but not yet enough to be insistent. She is awake, he is not. He's snoring a little. She considers waking him, but she's slept through far worse from him, and she's comfortable where she is. She is not by nature introspective and she isn't conscious of a lack of time for reflection. This morning seems luxurious to her on creature comfort grounds, and so it's just coincidental that her half-awake thoughts roam over so much of the last few years.

She is embarrassed that she's the sort of person who takes thousands of pictures, many of them unfocused or poorly composed, which she can't bring herself to delete. She can't resist the impulse to share, either. To her mother, to her father-in-law, and to Abby, she sends virtually everything, knowing they will enjoy her mistakes as much as she does. She tries to be more judicious in what she sends to Ducky, not appreciating the depth of his indulgence. She is far more critical in choosing what she sends to her father, with whom she communicates infrequently and with some defensiveness. She wants to be certain that what she sends to Eli says, without too much triumphalism: Look at my beautiful child, innocent and happy. Look at my Agent Meatball, how you underestimated him. Look at what we have done, on our own and without your assistance or approval.

If she were to send pictures to Gibbs, which would she choose? When she'd bought the frames for Ducky and Abby and Rivka, she had actually bought one for Gibbs. But she'd been uncertain, and Tony had not been. Don't send it, he'd said. He hadn't said it meanly, but he'd seemed very sure, and so the extra frame sits, unopened, in a bottom drawer in the spare bedroom.

When Tony had made up his mind to leave DC, he'd made it up quickly, and he'd made his plans without telling anyone. Just before he'd left, he'd said to her, There's a place for you if you want to come. I want you to come. But I'm going either way. This had amazed her, for Tony was never so direct, and they hadn't even been together. Anyone might have seen how restive and unhappy Tony had been in those days, but then he had been unhappy and restive for some time, and she hadn't expected him to do anything more than go on moping.

But he had said, I want you to come, but I'm going anyway. She had gone to Gibbs, confused and unhappy at the place she'd found herself in. She had hoped there was someway to salvage the old situation, or at least not to leave so abruptly. But Gibbs had been just as decisive as Tony had been. If you want him, you have to go. You won't get another chance.

And so she had gone, and gone on Tony's terms, and she has never regretted it. She does regret that going with Tony seemed to mean losing her relationship with Gibbs. Neither man asked her to make that choice. And she hasn't entirely, as she makes contact with Gibbs every now again, sending him a birth announcement, the news about Tony's promotion, a call—which always goes to voicemail—on important days. But it remains a source of sadness to her that the man who had once meant so much to her is basically a stranger, and that her daughter will never know him.

Of course she knows it is worse for Tony. His personal relationship with Gibbs had gone on longer, and the professional relationship had gone far deeper. Tony had made his peace with the limited nature of the personal relationship, but he could not live with the fracturing of the professional. Tony left believing that Gibbs no longer respected him as an agent. Once, it had been almost possible to think of himself as Gibbs's colleague; at the end he had seen himself as a poorly tolerated subordinate, and the lowest subordinate at that.

That had hurt him deeply, and she thinks it troubles him still. When they'd first come to Rota and he had taken over a team, he had struggled between trying too hard to be Gibbs and trying too hard to not be Gibbs. But he'd found his way. These days, the man she sees in the office mostly gets the balance between carrot and stick right, and mostly his goofiness is put on with the purpose of relaxing his young agents enough so that they learn and act, but the satisfaction is real. Perhaps not since he was playing football in college has he been so certain that he is in the right place, doing something as well as it can be done.

She is enormously proud of him.

Her career in Rota isn't quite so satisfying. After Tony she is the most experienced agent in the Rota office, but she can't be a team leader, as that would leave Tony supervising and evaluating her directly. She understands why but it chafes, and as much as she loves their lives here, she finds herself wondering if perhaps a year or two they might find themselves in a larger office where there would be enough senior agents for her to take a team.

But somehow his happiness is bigger than the happiness of other people, and it makes her happy, even if it's old-fashioned and embarrassing for a woman with her training. He'd made sure that Vance's evaluation was left out where she could see it; Vance had praised Tony for running a tight ship. "A tight ship?" she'd snorted. "The only thing tight around here is your pants."

"They're not tight, they're a European cut. And I make it look good."

And it does look good on him, all of it: responsibility, marriage, fatherhood. He's tan and fit, more fit than he was when they came here, and she sees a lot of the sunny young man she'd first met. (Happiness looks good on her too, but she doesn't look at herself that way and so does not notice it. Everyone else notices it.) It still surprises her that two people with such unpromising pasts, who had never really even dated, could jump into a new country and new jobs and a baby and somehow make it work. But they have, and it does.

It's not perfect. Gibbs still troubles them both, though Gibbs is her problem and Gibbs is his problem but somehow not _their_ problem. She wishes she could have more of the work satisfaction that Tony has. Neither of them wants Rebecca to be an only child. She had gotten pregnant easily (well, unintentionally) the first time, but since then they have had disappointments. She's had three miscarriages over the last two years. She had been convinced that the first one had been her fault, and she had kept herself chained to a desk the other two times, but the end result had been the same. Each miscarriage is a separate pain, and while the first was most shocking, the third was no easier. But this is sadness, their sadness, not a problem. The losses do not push them apart.

And as the sun gets a little brighter, and she feels very comfortable, and very pleased with herself for not interrupting his snores, he surprises her. "You're thinking too loud again."

"I didn't make a sound."

"But I could hear all the little gears going." He makes machine noises.

"You heard your own snoring." She squints up at the windows. "It's almost time to get up."

"Hey," he says hopefully.

"Ducky is across the hall."

"Ducky is frequently across the hall. And I think he knows that we, you know, do it."

She frowns. "But it's noisier in the morning. Or it feels noisier."

He rolls his eyes. "It's just as noisy as you make it. Keep in mind that we've got an aircraft carrier group coming in. You may have to wait two weeks before you get another chance at this."

She considers. "In the shower," she says. "To cover the noise. And only because I cannot listen to you whine for two weeks."

"It takes a proud man to turn down pity sex," he says. "And I am not that man."


	3. Chapter 3 Ducky wings

Ducky is their most frequent houseguest, a situation that would have surprised them all a few years ago. Ziva's mother does not like to fly, Tony's father is usually off somewhere doing something about which Tony prefers to know as little as possible, and Abby can rarely tear herself away from her lab or her complicated life outside it. Eli is not invited. But Ducky is. He had always been kind to both of them, and particularly so when they left, kind and even encouraging in his quiet way. When Rebecca was born, Ziva had decided it would be nice to honor Ducky somehow, given that Rebecca would be so short of family. Tony had suggested naming the girl Ducky, Donalda, Mallard, or Scotty; Ziva thought Victoria as a middle name would be nice.

That gesture won them regular visits and also won Rebecca the most doting of uncles. The girl adores him back, for he never minds her interruptions and her questions, and his answers, however long, make her laugh, even if she doesn't understand most of them, because she is wise enough to feel the warmth and affection behind them. Or perhaps she just knows that he's always good for an afternoon ice when her mother isn't around. He's a considerate houseguest, for he finds much in the area to interest him when the others are at work, and he's happy to babysit.

On this morning, when he goes upstairs, Tony and Rebecca are at the table, and Ziva is putting breakfast before them. Ziva is a very good cook, but motherhood has made her humorless on the subject of food, and these days she leans very much towards whole grains and raw food—or, as Tony says, dust, dirt, and twigs. Fortunately they have a housekeeper in the afternoons who generally cooks dinner, or they go out.

Ziva puts a bowl of dirt before Ducky, as well as a coffee. The DiNozzos look at their breakfast bowls glumly; Ziva glares, and they commence eating as slowly and miserably as possible. Becks goes back to playing Tetris on her father's iPhone. "I don't think Mami likes us very much," Tony says to his daughter under his breath.

"Her I like just fine, and you have no reason for whining."

"Yet," Tony says, and they both smile. "What are you in such a hurry about?"

"I have a dentist appointment this morning."

"You do not."

"I do. It's been on the calendar for a week."

"It has not. And you make dentist appointments months in advance, not a week. Did you lose a filling?"

"No. You just didn't notice it on the calendar."

"You're telling the nosiest man in the world that he's not paying attention to his wife's personal calendar."

"Maybe you're slipping."

"And maybe you're up to something. I notice you're not eating gruel. I suspect you're slipping out for waffles. With the cable man."

"We have satellite."

"And I've seen the satellite guy, which is why I'm thinking cable." Tony's phone beeps, he gets it away from Becks with some difficulty, looks at the message. "Where was I? Cable guy. Anyway, be sure you're in the office by 10. Campfire."

"Oh, dear," Ducky says. "You don't still call them campfires, do you?"

"Team building," Tony says. "More convivial than staff meeting. And yes, Miss Webster, I do know what convivial means."

"We can't leave you a car today, Ducky," Ziva says. "I hope that won't put a blimp in your plans."

"Oh, I hope it puts a blimp in his plans. Or better yet, his pants."

"Crimp, my dear," Ducky says, "and it certainly won't. I was planning on walking down to the Iglesia de la O."

Tony grins. "Ah, the big O. Praying for anything in particular, Ducky?"

"At my age, prayer is essential."

"What's the big O?" Becks asks, reaching for the iPhone. Tony pushes it out of her reach.

Ducky grins. He's feeling very sprightly this morning. "It's where babies come from, my dear Rebecca."

Becks says, "It is not. I know where babies come from."

"Oh, do you?" Ziva asks, but she's looking at Tony with narrowed eyes.

"Daddy told me he found me in the endzone at Ohio Stadium." She jumps up, hands over her head. "Touchdown!"

Tony flinches, as if he knows a headslap is coming. Ziva just puts her hand on the back of his head, but she leans in and whispers, "We will talk about this later."

Tony says to Ducky: "You'll give me a decent burial, won't you?"

"What makes you think we'll ever find your body?"

"True. Speak of me fondly, Ducky." He gets up and helps Ziva into her coat. "Campfire, 10am. Don't be late."

"Don't be late? This from the man who has managed to get his daughter to school late _every single day_."

"It's kindergarten, not real school. And it's not my fault. She always wants to change her shoes."

"She wants to change her shoes? This she does not get from me."

At this everyone takes a quick look at shoes. Ziva is wearing a pair of rugged walking shoes; Tony is wearing Ferragamo loafers; Becks is wearing pink plastic kitten heels that she has recently wheedled out of Tony.

"Okay, the shoe thing is definitely on me. Today we'll be on time. Promise. And campfire at 10am. Remember, here I'm just another hapless American male, bullied by his womenfolk. At work, I am large and in charge."

"You are large all right."

"And you are welcome, you lucky, lucky woman."

"At this rate you'll be lucky if it's only two weeks."

"You'll never be able to hold out that long. You'll be dragging me into the men's room by Monday."

She smiles, shakes her key. "I'll leave you the Smart Car."

"No! Not the clown car!" But she's gone.

Tony sighs and takes away the uneaten bowls of mush. In the kitchen he brightens up and makes them a real breakfast, toast for Becks, and eggs and sausage for himself and Ducky. "I live in the land of chorizo and jamon with a Jewish woman who could gut me like a fish. I lead a hard life."

"It could be worse. And I believe this is the best sausage I've ever had. Delicious."

Becks helps herself to some of Tony's eggs, and he helps himself to some of her toast. "You staying through the weekend, Ducky?"

"I had planned to. But it sounds as if you're rather pressed, Anthony."

"We are. We're short handed and we have a carrier group coming in. I know I'll be tied up, and Ziva probably will be too."

"I can try for a flight tomorrow."

"No, I'd really prefer you to stay if you can. We've had some trouble with the locals preying on Americans. Mostly penny-ante stuff, and Juana's pretty sensible, but I think we'd both feel better if we know that you're around. I think the chaos will be under control by Monday."

"Of course. I'm having tea with the Professors Charles this afternoon. I'm sure they'll be happy to have Rebecca join us."

"Still working on the widow?"

"She's not a widow."

"Have you seen him lately? She will be. And you didn't deny the working-on bit."

To get Tony off the subject of Mrs. Professor, Ducky says, "So you're having a bit of town and gown trouble here? I recall an incident when I was at college in Edinburgh…"

Before Ducky can finish, Tony catches sight of his iPhone in Becks's hands. "Oh my God. Becks, get dressed. This time she _will_ kill me."

Ducky takes the dishes to the sink. He can hear the ongoing battle over Rebecca's toilette. "Have you locked my phone again? No, you can't wear those to school, they're just for the house. Find your other sneaker. The tiara? Hmm…yes, I like it. Keep the tiara, leave the cannoli."

"I don't have a cannoli and I want an iPhone."

"Princesses don't carry phones. Other people make their calls for them. And leave Bunny here. Last time you left him at school and cried all night."

"I did not."

"Well, it seemed like all night."

Ducky passes Tony on the stairs, tying Rebecca's blue sneaker. And then Tony, carrying Rebecca, passes him on the stairs, and Ducky is treated to the sight of Tony folding himself into the little red clown car. He waves and heads into town. He thinks: What Jethro is missing. Though perhaps it would just make him sad. But it is a lovely fall day in Rota, and there is perhaps a spot of trouble on the way, and he is needed. He is whistling "Scotland the Brave" before he's gotten to the end of the block.


	4. Chapter 4 Wheels up in an hour

Wheels up in an hour

It's been a while since Jethro has had a boatbuilding project going. He still spends most nights in the basement, paging through woodworking magazines and listening to baseball games. Most nights he falls asleep there, counting on his watch alarm to wake him. This time, it's his phone. It's still dark, and he's about to throw the phone into the corner when he realizes it's Vance. Vance isn't much for prank calls, so he answers it.

Vance isn't much for pleasantries, either. "Pack a bag. A car will be at your house in ten minutes. Wheels up in an hour."

"Where am I going, Leon?"

"Andrews. The Gulfstream sits eight. You can have whoever you want. Take Sciuto, the lab tech is unreachable in Patagonia. You want the rest of your team?"

"How can I know who I want if I don't know where I'm going?"

"Rota," Vance says.

There's a long pause. "Why?"

"DiNozzo was carjacked this morning. David's the next most experienced person in the office, and she can't work the case. There's no one else there I can trust, and this could get very bad very quickly. In fact, it's very bad already."

"You're sending me on the Gulfstream to investigate a carjacking?"

"DiNozzo was stabbed. Ducky says it's life-threatening." Vance pauses. "His daughter was in the backset when the car was jacked. She's still missing."

"I'll want McGee and Abby. I'll be ready in ten."

"I'll call you on the plane with more info as I get it. And you have eight minutes, not ten."


	5. Chapter 5 A pretty good close up

5 A pretty good close up

McGee had been spending one of his occasional nights in Abby's coffin, so Leon Vance is spared the expense of a third car. Abby is wearing a yellow cotton dress and no make up and she looks…smaller. "It actually belongs to Sister Rosalita, but I borrowed it after I spilled beer on my bowling outfit. I wore it because it's the most cheerful thing I could find. I think it's so important to dress cheerfully in situations like this."

Normally Gibbs would cut her off, not being much interested in her thoughts on the appropriate clothing to wear to a carjacking-stabbing-kidnapping. And neither McGee nor Gibbs could be described as cheerfully dressed. But there's no need, as there's nothing else to talk about yet.

"How does Ducky know how Tony is?" McGee asks. "I thought he was in France."

"His conference ended two days ago. He decided to spend the rest of the week in Spain. You know how hard it is to come back after just three days." Abby turns to Gibbs. "Will they need pictures of Becks? I've got lots. Some on my computer and some on my iPad." She flips through some files on her iPad and holds it up to Gibbs. "This one is really recent, and it's a pretty good close up."

The pretty good close up shows a small girl wearing an oversized Ohio State jersey, a tiara, and an enormous smile. She is five, and judging from the smile, still has all her baby teeth. She has dark curly hair and light olive skin, which she gets from her mother. Her smile is all DiNozzo.

"I think they'll have done that already, Abby."

"Well, of course. Ziva will have plenty of pictures." She flips through a few more pictures, smiling. "Oh, here's one with Ducky! Isn't that sweet?"

"Very," McGee says. He meets Gibbs's eyes, and then he looks away. They both know too many stories like this and how they end.

Abby is still determinedly cheerful. "You know, I really think everything's going to be ok. Tony and Becks are both Cancer, Ziva's Scorpio. Mercury's going retrograde, which can mean communication problems, but it really mostly affects air signs. Otherwise, nothing major going on. I think they'll be ok."

Something major is already going on, McGee thinks, but can't bear to burst her bubble. It will burst soon enough on its own. "If it's a straight-up theft, they'll probably just drop the k—Rebecca off somewhere. What does Tony drive these days? A BMW?"

"Oh, no, they have a Mini Clubman." Abby holds up a picture of Ziva beside a blue Mini with a white roof. "And a Smart Car." And she holds up a picture of Tony and Becks washing the little red car.

McGee can't suppress a laugh. "Tony drives a Smart Car? Tony? It looks like a thumb."

Abby is stern. "The streets are narrow where they live. And it gets great gas mileage but still has a lot of safety features. It's a great choice. Very responsible."

McGee is close to saying something about the unlikely pairing of _Tony_ and _responsible_, but stern Abby gives hard head smacks, and presumably Tony, now Special Agent in Charge and owner of a Smart Car, is responsible these days. But it's hard to believe.

Gibbs is relieved when the airfone rings. He listens as Vance gives him an update and then asks that the personnel files of the Rota office be sent to Abby, so he can look them over and figure out if there's anyone there that can help run an investigation like this. And it will give him a reason to get that damned iPad and its enormous photo album out of Abby's hands.

The Rota office has ten slots, but one is empty, and two are away on detail. The remainder is a grab bag, mostly young, and only one SA has more than five years in. Rota isn't a hardship station, but it's not a glamour station either, and the most ambitious and talented are nosing around for slots in San Diego or Washington after they have a few good fitness reports under their belts. He closes the files and tries to remember who he knows in Naples, in Brussels, anyone who could reach Rota in twelve hours or so and be useful.

Why bring Abby? The lab in Rota is probably rudimentary, and Abby might be more useful in Washington. Why bring McGee? Tim has drifted away from fieldwork and back into tech. These days he's as likely to be on loan to Homeland Security or NSA. Why not one of Gibbs's own agents? He has a perfectly good team these days, with a former MP and a former Metro detective. They have been together for nearly two years, and they could run an investigation like this competently.

Sentimentality, Gibbs thinks, disgusted with himself. His current team is competent enough and could run this investigation without botching it, but they couldn't pull off a job like Somalia. Not that something like Somalia will be needed, but the impulse to fall back on those days, and those people, had just been too strong. You're getting too old for this job, Gibbs tells himself, and maybe you've already screwed the pooch, if those poor probies in Rota haven't already done it for you. And you can't screw this one up.

Vance, who has a tidy mind, has also forwarded DiNozzo's recent updates, and something catches Gibbs's eye right away. On Monday they had found a chop shop just north of Rota and impounded a vehicle belonging to a Marine dependent. DiNozzo's typing is as lousy as ever, but Gibbs is used to it, and he reads the shorthand in the 24-hour sheet as "Possible international connection? Russian? Good equipment for locals." Gibbs checks the photos: two stalls, newish-looking equipment. Russians are big these days in car smuggling, though Bulgarians are muscling in. The notes also suggest that they'll check with the civilian port authorities, but don't indicate what follow-up has been done.

Gibbs looks over the carjacking reports. Both at knifepoint, both by a single perp, young male, probably Spanish, otherwise the descriptions are vague. But both sound professional: grabs on quiet suburban streets, no other witnesses, no injuries. Quick. Clean.

Gibbs goes back to the personnel reports and finds the cell number of the SA he thinks DiNozzo would be most likely to trust. (He doesn't want to call Ziva; he wants to see her when he talks to her.) It takes him three tries, but when he gets through, he's told that all the usual things are being done: BOLO on the car, canvass of the scene, tight security on base, wiretaps on the relevant phones. They are working the carjacking angle hard and turning over the chop shop again.

Gibbs hangs up. It all sounds like what he'd do. The carjacking angle is the best one right now. The others hadn't ended in violence, but both victims had been women, and neither had offered resistance. DiNozzo wouldn't give up a car without a fight under any circumstances—even if looks like a thumb—and certainly not one with his daughter in it.

McGee and Abby are both on their computers. He asks McGee, "Can you track DiNozzo's cellphone from here?"

"We've been trying. Nothing."

Well, of course it wouldn't be that easy. He takes a deep breath and calls Ducky.


	6. Chapter 6 Fly this thing faster

6 Fly this thing faster

"Jethro, what a relief. The director said he would send you. When will you be here?"

"Three hours, more or less. Where are you?"

"At the base hospital. It's bad, Jethro. It was meant to be a killing blow, and if he'd lain in the street another five minutes, it would have been. They've put out a call for emergency blood donations. Of course everyone in the office and many of the MPs wanted to come in, but they're needed elsewhere. I donated myself, but I'm not the right blood type. Fortunately Tony has quite a common blood type, and there's also O negative as well."

"Duck. What about the investigation?"

"All the usual things seem to be in train. They're nice young people in the office, Jethro. Smart enough, I suppose. It's the base hospital I'm worried about. I'm not sure they're up to the job."

"Why didn't they airlift him somewhere else?"

"Too dangerous. You can't ligate a celiac artery, even for the time it would take to transport."

This is just so much Martian to Gibbs. "Where's Ziva?"

"At the office, on the phones. They wouldn't let her out in the field. A wise choice, I suppose. And close to the hospital."

"Maybe she should be at home waiting for a ransom call."

"They don't have a landline. No one here has one. It takes months to get one installed. Professor Charles said they waited…"

"Ducky."

"You should call her, Jethro."

"I'll talk to her when I get there. Abby and McGee are with me. You call one of us if something happens."

"Of course. A ransom call? Would that be good or bad?"

"Either. But it would be something to go on."

He hangs up. Abby and McGee are on their computers, occasionally muttering about the insufficiencies of the Gulfstream's wifi. "Whaddaya got, McGee?"

"All the text messages and emails sent by Rota NCIS are being copied to me directly."

"Any hits on the BOLO?"

"Yes, too many, actually. Apparently there are over a hundred red four-door Smart Cars registered in the area, not counting 15 registered to a car rental agency. There are nearly twice as many two-door red Smart Cars. Also about 30 Mitsubishis that are easily mistaken for a Smart Car. They did find one about a mile from the school without plates, but it's dusty."

DiNozzo with a dusty car? But what were the odds of him driving a Smart Car? "Have them tow it anyway."

"Will do."

"Abby?"

"The canvass of the crime scene didn't turn up much. Blood, which they collected for testing, but it's probably Tony's." Abby swallows, hard. "Um…oh, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs! They have the knife." She frowns. "But it was handled at the scene by the ambo guys. And who knows who else."

"Where is it now?"

"I…it doesn't say."

"Well, find out, and make sure that no one else handles it before we get there."

"His personal effects are at the office. They'll hold them for us too." Abby frowns. "Tony's sidearm is with his stuff. What kind of bad guy doesn't take the gun?"

"One who's taking the cannoli," McGee says. "Sorry, boss, it was just—anyway, a pro who knows that the weapon will tie him to the crime too easily."

"Or someone who doesn't know the gun is there." Gibbs tries to picture the encounter in his mind: DiNozzo just getting out of the car, approached by…a young Spanish man? What are the odds that DiNozzo doesn't even reach for his weapon, knowing what he knows about the spate of carjackings, the likelihood that professionals are behind it? Maybe SAIC DiNozzo's too much of a politician these days and doesn't want to start off a possibly innocent encounter with a local by drawing his weapon. But his daughter is in the car. So, not a young Spanish man, but someone that wouldn't immediately alarm DiNozzo.

The simple scenario keeps branching out in his mind, he knows too little about the scene and the people and all the little details that could speak to a quiet, listening mind, and his gut won't tell him which is the right choice. Another random carjacking, with circumstances unexpectedly upping the violence. But the random carjacking of the NCIS SAIC, who's just found a chop shop? Gibbs still doesn't believe in coincidences.

So: revenge disguised as another random carjacking, by someone angry at having his business disturbed. Or revenge for some other transgression, because even those who love Anthony DiNozzo would admit he's nobody's idea of an angel.

Gibbs remembers, unwillingly, a trip on another Gulfstream—an older one—from Gitmo, and DiNozzo's joy at being on it. Kate Todd and Paula Cassidy had been there too. Both dead now. Gibbs's last words to DiNozzo had been: So go.

"McGee. Knock on that door and tell that pilot to fly this thing faster."

"Yes, Boss."


	7. Chapter 7 On the ground

7 On the ground

They're met at the airport by a well-dressed tall young man who introduces himself as Special Agent Tawan Allen. "We spoke on the phone, sir."

"Don't sir me," Gibbs says. "You have enough time to stand around on airport tarmacs, Special Agent Allen?"

"I've been waiting about five minutes, Special Agent Gibbs. I didn't think I could solve the crime in those particular five minutes. And you might solve the crime in the time you spend otherwise getting lost between here and the office."

"We don't get lost," Gibbs says, but he thinks: Good man. No wonder DiNozzo likes him. "There many mean streets in Indianapolis, Special Agent Allen?"

"Enough. But you could probably learn a lot just walking the beat in Mayberry RFD. If you want to."

"So what have you learned walking the beat in Rota?"

"Nice town. Hard hit by the recession, still not recovered. Base is very important, but it's not the happiest relationship."

"NCIS made that relationship worse?"

"Not as far as I can see. We get along pretty well with the LEOs. But they're toothless. Prosecuting property crimes against Americans isn't a priority."

"Would you say something bad about your boss, Allen?"

"If I had something bad to say."

"I want to go to the office first and see what you've got. Then to the scene."

"Did you want to stop by the hospital?"

"Not yet."

When they get to the office, it's empty but for one young woman who introduces herself as Special Agent Sarah Cosgrove. She's familiar, but Gibbs can't put a finger on it. "Where's Agent David?"

"Gone to the hospital. Tony's out of surgery."

"Tell me what you've got."

They start in the forensics lab which is, as he'd feared, rudimentary. Abby looks ashen, but she bucks up when she's handed real evidence. The knife is sticky with dried blood and the handle is ribbed rubber, a lousy surface for finding prints. Still, Abby loves a challenge. "Did you print the ambo guys?"

"I don't know."

Abby rolls her eyes. "Well, please do. I'll need them to eliminate them."

"Do you think you can get prints off that?" Gibbs asks.

"Have I ever let you down?"

The shirt is stiff with dried blood, as is the tie, and bits of the jacket and pants as well, and the pants shredded below the knees. "Looks like he was dragged by the car."

"We think so. He was found about a hundred feet north of the sidewalk in front of the school."

"I don't know if I can get much off the clothes," Abby says. "Tony loves his tropical weight wool, but it's not good fabric for prints. Did they check under his hands at the hospital?" She turns to Gibbs. "They don't wash your hands in the emergency room, do they? This is Spain, I don't know how they do things."

"Something else for Agent Cosgrove to find out," Gibbs says. He turns to Allen. "Still working the carjacking angle?"

"It's our best lead at the moment."

"Anything personal or more specific? Threats to the office in general, or to DiNozzo in particular? His wife? You check the phone logs and email?"

"Didn't find anything unusual in the phone logs. Nothing unusual in Ziva's email or cell. Haven't been able to check Tony's."

"McGee."

"On it, boss."

Allen sighs. "I'm sure we look like a bunch of rubes to you. But in the last seven hours we've canvassed the scene, spoken to witnesses, gotten traces on all the relevant phones, reworked the chop shop, and run down 30 hits on the BOLO. We're working through our casefiles. Also, we checked on the whereabouts of that ME assistant."

"Where is he?"

"Still in jail in Maryland. We asked the guards to toss his cell just in case. Haven't heard back. It's a longshot, but hits have been arranged from jail before. If you have some other names from before Rota, we'll start running those down too."

"DiNozzo had some mob people angry at him a few years back."

"More than a few years. If this was Naples, I'd say it was lot more likely. Not much Cosa Nostra in Rota."

"Where there's docks, there's trouble."

"Yes, but the organized crime we have here is more likely to be under North African or Russian influence, not Italian. And our work doesn't take us to the civilian docks very often."

"A little girl has been missing for over eight hours, Allen. I'm interested in evidence, not your conclusions."

"We know the stakes, sir. We know the little girl. And her father."

"Just so long as you're not letting that slow you down."

DiNozzo's office is locked. Gibbs gestures impatiently for Allen to open it. Inside, it looks much as it had on the MTAC screen, with the plastic frame flashing its cheerful images. DiNozzo's filing system hasn't improved much. He rifles through the loose papers and the inbox, but nothing catches his eye. Something is nagging at him, something from the MTAC conference. "What about the carrier group?"

"Tenders are already in view. We expect the main body to reach here tomorrow."

"Anything special about this arrival?"

"Just that it's large and late. The group's been in Turkey assisting earthquake recovery efforts. These guys are low on supplies and can't make the Atlantic crossing without a long stay. We expect the call to run about ten days."

"Was DiNozzo worried about the call?"

"We're short handed. But there might have been more. We were supposed to have a 10am meeting this morning. I think the call was the main item."

Gibbs looks up. "A campfire?"

Allen suppresses a smile. "Yes, sir, a campfire."

"DiNozzo bring s'mores?"

"Donuts. Or what passes for donuts around here."

Ah, a locked drawer. Gibbs picks it quickly, but there's nothing there besides some clean shirts and socks, a tube of superglue, and some nail polish remover. Locking that drawer would be DiNozzo's idea of a joke. He looks over the office and again has the sense that there's something from the MTAC conference that he should remember. The slideshow on the plastic frame is similar to the one in Abby's lab, but the frame is different. Again, the DiNozzos wash cars and watch football. "Let's get to the scene."

Abby stops them on the way out. "Gibbs, shouldn't you see Ziva?"

"Later. I need to see the scene in daylight. You and McGee got enough to keep yourselves busy?"

"We need that car," Abby says.

"I will get you the car as soon as I can. As soon as you're done with the knife you get over to the hospital and see if it's worth swabbing for skin samples." He kisses Abby on the top of the head and leaves her to her bloody knife and lousy crime lab.


	8. Chapter 8 I have murder in my heart

8 I have murder in my heart but I'd rather die in bed

Ziva reaches the office and then begins to fume when she realizes that, if Tony isn't in the office by now, he has _again_ failed to get Becks to school on time. What is _wrong_ with the man? Does that ridiculously expensive watch on his wrist _not work_? Why won't he make Becks do the simplest thing? Oh, it is so much easier to be the fun parent, who makes silly faces over perfectly good food and lets you use that special encrypted phone to play Tetris and buys plastic shoes that will probably cause toes to fall off or ankles to break. The older Becks gets the younger Tony gets, and soon, she thinks, she will have two dreadful ten-year-olds on her hands, breaking windows and riding skateboards in the house and sneaking cigarettes and resenting her every attempt at discipline.

Then her phone rings, showing the school's number, and she is forming an apology when she learns that her world had ended while she was sitting at her desk cursing her husband and child.

She goes to the base hospital. A few terrible moments, all these people pushing about and shouting, and Tony pale and dead looking but still breathing. Afterwards, though, all she can really remember is that his hands are bloody and there's a scrape on his cheek. He should not have a scrape on his cheek. He should always be clean-shaven and tan and smiling. But then there is Ducky, talking slowly and softly, comforting. Tactfully taking the bag of bloody clothing out of her hand, walking her back to the office. "Stay here, my dear, and I'll keep watch for you. Stay busy. The best thing, really."

And for the rest of the day she doesn't know what to do, whether to wind her butt or scratch her watch. (A Tonyism, but from what movie? Chick flicks are his weakness, and she's sure it's a chick flick, for all its crudeness. Oh, why does it matter? If she can remember, will Tony appear, tan and clean-shaven and smiling, apologizing for his lateness? What would she give to be sitting through another campfire?) She is wild to go to the scene, certain that it will speak to her, tell her where her child is and how to fix her husband. But she receives a call from Leon Vance himself, with direct orders to stay in the office and man the phones, or go to the hospital to be with her husband. "I don't want you messing this up," Vance says.

But she wants to mess it up. She doesn't want a nice investigation, all tidied up and suitable for prosecution. She wants people _dead_. She wants to make them dead herself. She wants to use the knife that has been used on Tony and to use it in the worst ways she knows, and she knows many terrible ways to use a knife. She has killed before but has never known such killing rage.

But even more than she wants to kill, she wants to rewind. Why hadn't she said: I'll take her to school. Or better yet: It's just kindergarten. Spend the day with Ducky. Enjoy yourselves, have a nice walk, play cards on the terrace and listen to Ducky's stories, eat ice cream for lunch and cake for dinner and candy for dessert and we will come home tonight and take off those awful pink shoes you so love and tuck you in with Bunny and we will go sleep in our rumpled bed until the sun comes through the windows again.

Stay busy. She calls Ducky every five minutes, desperate for news, to be told each time, with as much patience as if it were the first time, that it's far too soon to worry, delicate operation, no news good news. What fool had come up with the phrase "no news is good news"? No news is _no news_. She wants news more than she wants food or air.

Then it occurs to her that she ought not to be using her phone: what if a ransom call goes to voicemail while she's listening to Ducky say the same thing for the tenth time?

The only thing she can cling to, besides Ducky's shopworn reassurances, is Gibbs. Gibbs is on the way. Gibbs will look at her in that no-nonsense way and stop her pacing, stop her teeth from chattering, stop her recriminations and point her in the right direction. Gibbs will find Rebecca. Perhaps the movie will even end with one of those chick-flick scenes that Tony loves, with the extended family reunited and reconciled, laughing at silent jokes as the credits roll.

When Tony is out of surgery she goes back to the hospital. Tony is a trained investigator. There is nothing that Tony won't have noticed, from the brand of the perp's shoes to his watch. He will know where the perp gets his hair cut. He will locate the perp by guessing which movie he rented last week. Tony is out of surgery but not awake. He is still pale and dead looking with a scrape on his cheek and his own blood still on his hands. His eyes do not open. He does not take her into his arms and tell her that everything will be all right. He has no news.

And it is past time for Gibbs to have arrived, but he doesn't come. Abby comes, looking not herself in a yellow dress, but even her hug cannot help. Ziva watches as Abby does her grim business of scraping under Tony's nails. The day is dying away, this day that had started so well. There is no one to tell her that things will be all right that she can believe. Bad things have happened, and they have not stopped happening. She knows she has more to lose than she's already lost today.


	9. Chapter 9 This is personal

9 This is personal

It's late afternoon when they reach the school. The principal has already given a statement, but she gives it again to Gibbs. The DiNozzos are always late, she says, always; she had seen the red car pull up and had decided to have a word. But when she got outside she saw the car speeding away, no Rebecca, and Mr. DiNozzo lying in the street. No, she had noticed nothing unusual about the car, no damage, no missing license plate.

"You're sure the child was in the car?"

"No, not sure. But I didn't see her anywhere else, and why would Mr. DiNozzo be here without Rebecca?"

Gibbs turns to Allen. "You've searched the woods and the area? There's always the chance she was already out of the car and ran away."

"We searched. Becks knows everyone in the office and some of the MPs. However frightened she was, she'd have come out if she was hiding around here."

Gibbs asks the principal: "Could she have tried to walk home?"

"It's a long walk. Her father always drops her off in the morning. Her mother usually picks her up. Sometimes the nanny, but in the car or in a cab. I don't think Rebecca could find her way home alone."

Allen says, "He was dragged by the car. If he knew Becks was out he would have let go."

"He could have been caught on the car somehow."

"His clothes weren't torn. Only the knees. He was holding on."

Gibbs gives up, though it had been a more cheering prospect to think of the little girl hiding under a bush, waiting for a familiar face or voice to come out. Now he focuses on the scene. "Nice place for an ambush."

"Yes. The school's the only building on this side of the street."

"What's that back there?"

"Private golf course. Trees and hedges on both sides of the driveway here. Good places to hide."

"No businesses around? No cameras?"

"All residential back here, except for the school and the golf course. It's a very nice neighborhood. This isn't like Buenos Ares, Agent Gibbs. The houses don't have gates or security cameras."

More rotten luck. But it's getting a little clearer. "They were always late," Gibbs says. "Other parents would already have been gone. Small chance of any witnesses. Someone's been watching."

"Seems like it."

"I don't think you'd watch that hard for a five-year-old four-door Smart Car, do you, Agent Allen?"

"I wouldn't, no."

He walks down the street. A little blood by the driveway. Vague smears that begin a few feet north. A larger blot, dried and dark now, perhaps a hundred feet north. A long time to hang on for a man with a killing blow to his gut. Yes, the girl had been in the car.

"Where's the road go?"

"Half a mile in that direction and a left turn takes you into downtown Rota. Turn right and you're on the highway in a few minutes, northeast to Jerez."

"The chop shop?"

"Not the most direct route. But you could be there in 15 minutes. Maybe less."

"You only rousted that chop shop on Monday. It's Thursday. Not much time to set up an ambush."

"But we caught the first carjacker nearly three weeks ago. Enough time for them to get nervous and start planning something. The local cops aren't serious about this stuff. We are."

"But that carjacker didn't give you much."

"They don't know that."

Gibbs's gut is rumbling a little. The carjacking angle still just feels wrong. This, he knows, is personal somehow. Someone had stood in those trees by the driveway, watching the DiNozzos miss the morning bell day after day.

There's nothing more to see here, he realizes. Now for the hard part.


	10. Chapter 10 The hard part

10 The hard part

Gibbs sends Allen back to the office. This part he has to do alone.

There are two MPs standing outside the ICU unit. Ziva sits beside Ducky, who pats her hand. "Look who's here, my dear," he says. "Everything's well in hand now."

She rises. Gibbs puts his hands on her shoulders, feels how tight and fragile she is. He understands only too well the look in her eyes. They are more dead and farther away than when they had found her in Somalia. She says, "I think I understand you a little better now."

"It's not over."

"Isn't it?" She pulls herself together. "You want to question me, of course. I'm surprised that no one else has. I suppose they're afraid to. When something like this happens, everyone becomes afraid. As if it's catching."

They walk down the hall. Gibbs buys them each a cup of coffee from a machine and a chocolate bar for her. "Have you eaten anything today?"

"Only ashes," she says, and takes the candy bar. She takes a bite. It is awful, sweet and stale. The coffee is bitter. They balance out somehow.

Gibbs asks, "Does he always take her to school?"

She notes the use of present tense. It's not like Gibbs to be tactful. No, that's not true: she's seen him talk to other witnesses just like this. A pity he's not like this in his off hours. "Tony always takes her to school. I go into work earlier so that I can be home earlier in the afternoon."

"And they're always late."

"Always. Do you know why they're always late? Tony says it's because she always wants to change her shoes. She's just like Tony, so fussy about her clothes." She takes another bite and another swallow. "But that's not the real reason. Every morning I make them a good breakfast, muesli with flax. Flax has omega something and it's good for the heart, and Tony's mother died so young. But they do not like it. Every morning after I'm gone Tony makes them another breakfast. Eggs and toast. She likes the Seville marmalade. Tony thinks I do not know this. He thinks it would hurt my feelings. And so they are late every day."

It is moments like these that make these interviews so terrible: the small, personal details, the things that make one life different from all others, the homely everydayness of love. Gibbs has read the BOLO: White dress with pink and blue flowers, yellow sweater, Hello Kitty backpack, white socks, blue sneakers, tiara. There are similar images that haunt him still, and he knows that these small details of this particular life will be burned into his mind, will follow him to the grave if it can't all be made right.

"Ziva. This is not your fault."

"Isn't it? I have killed people, Gibbs. Tony has killed people. We have angered people. How do you know this isn't my fault?"

"It's not your fault that someone's tried to hurt you," he says. "Ziva. This looks planned. Who would want to do this?"

"Too many people."

"Think. Recently. What's happened?"

"Nothing has happened, Gibbs. We haven't turned up any terrorists. We haven't crossed any gunrunners. We found a chop shop. We have caught a carjacker and some purse snatchers. We have busted some meth cookers on base. We caught a petty officer embezzling. A nurse stealing drugs. Nothing important. Nothing to cause this." She draws a breath. "Saleem."

"That was eight years ago."

"They have long memories. Eli does. He wanted revenge for something that had happened a decade before."

"Have you talked to your father today?"

"He could not help." She frowns. "You can't think he's involved. He would never hurt my Agent Meatball."

"Anything else closer to home? No threats? No strange calls? Nothing out of the ordinary?"

She smiles but there is no mirth. "You are asking if Tony is having an affair. Or if I am having an affair."

"That's not the only possibility."

"But it is the possibility you are worried about. Understandable under the circumstances. You knew us when we were not so-responsible."

"Ziva…"

"No and no. Do you know why I am so certain? Do you know what it is like to be happy after you thought it impossible? After you thought you did not deserve it?"

"No," he says, and changes course. "The principal mentioned a nanny."

"Juana Jimenez. Tony calls her Tia Juana, of course. She has been with us five years. And she is never with us in the morning. She does not know about the lateness."

"We'll go over all the office files. There might be something that's been missed. Who's the best person in the office for that sort of work?"

"Sarah, I think. She is a bit of a McGee. Very smart, very tech, but not a lot of what Tony would call street."

He wishes she would stop saying _Tony_. No amount of repetition is going to make this any more bearable or any less painful. "Ziva…"

"Gibbs, I can't listen to reassurances from you. Tony is…" She gives up on both the candy bar and the coffee and throws them away. "Rebecca has been gone for ten hours. We both know it's been too long. We both know…"

And then her cell phone rings.

Gibbs's phone rings a split second later. He puts his hand up to stop Ziva. It's McGee. "Ziva has a call coming in from a blocked number, boss."

"We know the drill, McGee. Put it on speaker, Ziva, and keep him talking."

She pushes the green button. And suddenly her world is full of noise: it is Becks. "Mommy, mommy, this is a stupid game. I want to come home."

"Of course, my darling. Where are you?"

"I don't know. Mommy, I think they hurted Babbo."

Becks knows better than to say hurted, and she rarely calls Tony Babbo any more. "It's all right, my darling. Tell me where you are."

And then a male voice, unaccented, she doesn't recognize it, speaking in English. "Five hundred thousand euro. You'll get instructions." And the call is over. Her hand is shaking so badly that Gibbs takes the phone and hangs up. "I didn't keep him talking."

"You couldn't. We're dealing with a pro. He put the proof on upfront."

The proof. For a moment her knees go slack and she thinks she'll fall, but a surge of pure joy straightens her up. "She's alive."

"She's alive."

"We don't have five hundred thousand euro."

Gibbs smiles. "We'll let Vance take care of that."

She goes to Ducky, dear Ducky who has been so kind and patient and who loves Rebecca Victoria so. "She's alive, Ducky. I talked to her. She's alive. They want five hundred thousand euro."

"A bargain," he smiles.

"I should tell Tony." But she hesitates.

"Tell him, my dear. We don't know what people hear when they're sleeping."

"Ducky, he is not sleeping." But her face is transformed, alive again, and she goes into the ICU room to tell Tony that she is going to get Rebecca and to kiss the unscraped side of his face.

Gibbs and Ducky watch. "How did Rebecca sound, Jethro?"

"Scared. Angry. Still in one piece."

"This is far from over, isn't it?"

Gibbs shrugs. "In some parts of the world kidnapping is a business, Ducky. Hostages are returned alive all the time. Particularly a child that can't identify her kidnappers or her location."

"But not here, Jethro, not here. And how often does such a kidnapping begin with a murder attempt?" With a rare fierceness, Ducky says, "You _must_ bring her back, Jethro. You must… Tony's survival is not a sure thing at this point."

"He made it through surgery."

"It's something, but the great danger with this sort of injury is postoperative infection. He's already running a fever. You must find her, Jethro. For all of us."

"Working on it, Duck."


	11. Chapter 11 A bullpen full of probies

11 A bullpen full of probies

When Gibbs and Ziva return to the office, there are too many agents there not obviously doing anything. "Has the investigation stopped?" Gibbs asked.

"We have a ransom drop to get ready."

"It won't take all of you to get it ready. Keep working the case until I tell you otherwise. Keep running down the BOLOs. If anyone doesn't have something to do, I'll tell you what to do. When the drop's ready, I'll let you know. Allen, what about that cell tossing?"

"Nothing interesting. Prison phone logs don't show any overseas calls. Nothing in emails, either."

"Cosgrove. Get the prints from the ambo drivers?"

"Bill—Agent Burns—ran them down."

"Who's reviewing the current case files?"

Cosgrove says, "Bill and I are. We have a list of every investigation over the last three years that either Tony or Ziva worked, and we're tracking down every suspect. We have the whereabouts of virtually all the servicepeople. About half are still in Leavenworth and accounted for."

"Pick out the most dangerous ones at Leavenworth and have their cells tossed, too. What about the half that aren't in Leavenworth?"

"Most of the others are at duty stations, but they were misdemeanor arrests—most of them just got infractions. We have a few big chicken dinners that we can't account for yet."

"Check with LEOs in their home areas. And if none of this turns up a few suspects, turn back the clock, work the older cases. What about the civilians?"

"That's a lot harder. We're checking last addresses and the state and local prison systems, but there's not much more we can do without court orders. The privacy laws are a lot stricter here."

Privacy laws. And they all take it so seriously. A little girl is missing, her father's probably dying, and he has a bullpen full of probies. "Ziva, keep your cellphone on and charged up. And go lie down."

"But he's going to call," Ziva says.

"McGee and Abby are both tracking your calls. There are people all over this office who can hear it ring. Go lie down. It's going to be a long night."

She doesn't want to go, but Gibbs takes her by the arm and steers her into Tony's office. The faces in the frame smile back at him. Again, he's pricked by the sense that there's something in that MTAC conference that he should be remembering.

"Cosgrove. I need to see the video feed from an SAIC Europe conference with Leon Vance."

"They have them every Monday."

"Last Monday, not this Monday. I just need the last five minutes or so. Track it down."

"Should I send it to your cell phone?"

"Send it to Abby's iPad."

"I'll have it in about an hour. We don't store the feeds here."

"Okay. But do that first."

He catches Bill Burns and Tawan Allen exchanging smiles. "What's so funny, special agent?"

"Nothing. It's just that we've heard stories. So far you don't disappoint."

"You don't want to see me disappointed, Agent Burns."

"No, Special Agent Gibbs, I do not. And I'm going to pull some more case files right now."

There's not much for him in the lab. McGee couldn't triangulate the cell precisely, but he knows the call was made within a 20-mile radius. "That's still a big area," Gibbs says.

"Not as big as you might think. A lot of that radius is over water."

"Did you record the call?"

"Sure."

"Abs, any reason to think it wasn't live?"

"How ghoulish, but I knew that was coming. No, no reason. There's no sound of mechanical manipulation, and the conversation flows pretty naturally. Also, you can hear Becks in the background when the perp's talking. Not Memorex."

"What else have you got?"

"No joy from the knife or the clothes. The fingerprints on the knife are on the blade and the top of the hilt, and they're Tony's and the ambulance driver. Nothing usable on the grip. Tony did have a lot of blood on his hands, and I think it's mostly his, but there was some skin under his fingernails. Enough for a match."

"ID?"

"Well, if he's military or in the Interpol database. But this equipment is like five years out of date, Gibbs. Don't expect it tonight."

"Does Spain have a DNA database?"

"No. Of course they have tissue donor registries and blood donor registries just like we do, but we don't know how to hack them."

"And the privacy laws are much tougher in Spain." McGee has started the sentence, but Gibbs finishes it. "So I've heard."

"Gibbs, one more thing. Maybe it's obvious, but I'll mention it. Tony would have left some marks. If you find a guy in the next few days with some long scratches on his arm, cuff him."

"Could you identify the scratches?"

"Only in a general way. It would have been so much easier if Tony had bitten him."

And that gives Gibbs the first good laugh that he's had in a long time. "I may have to make that rule 52. Always bite. Cosgrove is sending some video to your iPad, Abs. Let me know when you've got it. McGee, stay on the phones."

McGee follows him out and pulls him aside. "Boss, I did a little checking."

"On what?"

"Tony and Ziva. I felt kinda dirty doing it, but…"

"No, it's the right thing to do. What'd you find?"

"Nothing. No unusual activity on their bank accounts, deposits or withdrawals. No odd purchases on their credit cards. No car rentals or hotel rooms. Nothing off in any of the personal email accounts I could find."

"Cellphones?"

"Nothing on Ziva's. Tony has a personal cell which I checked. He doesn't use it much. He's, um, probably abusing his work phone."

"McGee, do I look like I'm interested in filing an inspector general complaint?"

"No, I'm just guessing anyway. The problem is that Tony has a special encrypted iPhone, like all the SAICs. I can't get access to his calls or text messages without permission, and that's virtually all of his calls."

"Who gives permission?"

"Vance."

"Get it."

"Will do. But I thought you might want to ask for that five hundred thousand euro loan first. We should start assembling the cash now. He might call back any minute, and it might be very hard for us to get it in country. We might have to pull reserves from several embassies. I think there's a fund for this, but I'm not sure how much is on hand."

"That's good thinking, McGee. I'll start working Vance."

McGee's right: this can't be done in ten minutes. "May take three hours. It'll have to come from Lisbon as well. And I'll have to arrange couriers and protection."

"You don't seem worried about the money, Leon."

"I expect you to get it back."

"Not if it means risking a little girl's life."

"You're more resourceful than that. How's Tony?"

"Ducky can give you the technical details."

"Has David been in touch with her father?"

"I don't think so. You don't think Eli would kidnap his granddaughter, do you?"

"That's not what I'm thinking. I'm in a delicate position right now. Eli has some great assets in Europe. But I'm not sure I should involve him without her knowledge."

"When I need Eli David's help, you can put me on the retired list."

"For how long?" Vance chuckles and hangs up. Gibbs doesn't get the upper hand on Vance very often. No one does.


	12. Chapter 12 Swimming with sharks

12 Swimming with sharks

Very Special Agent Large and in Charge Anthony DiNozzo is in a strange place, not awake, not asleep, not quite dreaming, this not unpleasant state occasionally jogged by a sense of something terribly unpleasant just out of sight. Like being some clueless teenager in a horror flick, ambling through the sun-dappled woods, not knowing that the camera keeps cutting away to a bad guy in the shadows wearing a mask. Or like floating in the warm Mediterranean water off Málaga and being nosed every now and then by a shark. Yeah, more like that.

So: here's the thing about Ziva David. Girl has her own appetites, not small, and she's almost always game for what Ducky would call a bit of the slap and tickle. Not offended by the idea that once a day and twice on holidays is reasonable. She gives as good as she gets.

She's not much of a talker, unless you like insults, which is something they have in common, and she's really not much for the mushy stuff, which is something they don't have so much in common, because Very Special Agent is hesitant about dishing it out—no man in his right mind wants to look weak to a woman with an enormous knife collection—but he does lap it up. Could live on it, probably. With Ziva you could go six months or more without an endearment that doesn't mention your hind end or its alleged hairiness. I love you is apparently reserved for leap years.

So this morning—was it this morning?—he'd followed her into the shower expecting a quick snack, and happy enough with the prospect. She'd been in the mood for something quite different as it turned out, and it was neither quick nor snack-sized. Because she doesn't say much, and she didn't then, but every so often you get this moment when she takes your face in her hands so you can't look away and she pulls in close so you see nothing but two enormous dark eyes and there is nothing in those dark eyes but the very Zivaness of Ziva and those eyes tell you that she is all on in this and that she wants you all in on this with her and that this is the only thing worth wanting. And you hope that you look the same back, but you worry a little that mostly you look goofy, because this is something you don't get used to. And then she moves in on you and it's movie-love kisses and you think that the man who first put a bench in a shower is a _genius_. And afterwards you try not to think about it too much because you don't want to wear it out, and you tell yourself that words are way overrated, and it's a long time before the hairy butt jokes seem too frequent.

Good times, hence the whole warm Mediterranean water metaphor. (Analogy? He can never remember which is which.) The shark? He can't remember. But he knows something terrible has happened, something that makes it seem as if this morning were already a long time ago, that there will be no more mornings like that, that he will never see the Zivaness of Ziva again, and no measure of "Good job" or "tight ship" or even "I love you" could ever make up for the loss.

And so he can't wake himself up to see the shark. He's not floating, more like drowning. And sharks are patient.


	13. Chapter 13 You've got mail

13 You've got mail

And now they wait. After his rant, Gibbs can't just sit around, so he goes back into Tony's office as quietly as he can and pulls all the paperwork off his desk and out of his inbox. There's no real need to be quiet, because Ziva isn't sleeping, she's watching the images change on the digital frame.

And he can't send someone out for real coffee, either, so he's forced to drink the office swill. Normally he packs his own coffee, but he hadn't had time to grind any during his eight-minute packing window. And he hates paperwork. The patient combing through of records is not his skill. His mind doesn't work well while he's seated.

"Agent Cosgrove."

"Please call me Sarah."

"How are we doing on those court orders for the civilian info?"

"They're filled out. Judge Almeira should be done with dinner around 10:30."

"It's only 8:30 now."

"Tony says it's better to hit him after dinner. He'll be a lot less likely to read the forms too carefully."

"Is there some other judge who eats earlier?"

"Not in Rota. And not one so likely to sign orders from us. Almeira went to school in the U.S. and is pretty friendly. Tony plays golf with him."

"You suck up to judges?"

"We're in a foreign country, sir, and one that's an important ally. We try to be as diplomatic as possible."

"Have you diplomatically downloaded my MTAC feed, or are there privacy laws on that, too?"

She's holding up pretty well under the Gibbs stare. "MTAC has promised the download within fifteen minutes. They tape everything, sir, and the indexing scheme is a little difficult. And it's stored using a special compression process. It needs to be reconverted using a new protocol that-"

"Agent Cosgrove."

"Sarah, please."

"You and Agent McGee should have coffee together. You'd find a lot to talk about."

"Oh, no thank you, sir."

And then there's another BOLO hit. Cosgrove takes the details, and she's getting excited. "Roger that, we'll have agents en route ASAP." She turns to Gibbs. "A little girl matching Becks's description was just spotted at a gas station downtown. Two men, red four-door Smart Car."

"Run it down."

She sends the information to the two agents that have been running down BOLOs all day. "You don't seem very excited. I mean, it's fresh. And downtown traffic is terrible at this hour. Our agents are only three blocks away. They won't be hard to find."

"How'd you get into law enforcement, Sarah?"

"My father's retired NYPD. Lieutenant. Why aren't you more interested?"

"Why didn't you join the NYPD?"

She flushes. "I didn't think I'd be much good as a beat cop. Wrestling drunks and all that."

"You have to wrestle drunks in this job sometimes."

"The MPs do most of that. Why aren't you interested?"

"The perp is a pro. He wouldn't be caught in downtown dinner traffic. And the Smart Car was ditched hours ago. We just haven't found it yet."

"So we shouldn't run it down."

"Of course you should. I could be wrong."

"But your gut says otherwise. We've heard about your gut."

"Do you think my gut is right?"

"Tawan is starting to, and he's the best police in the group after Tony." Her cheerfulness slips a little. "I wish I knew what Tony thought."

"So think like him. How does he think?"

"Like a real police. Tony has a lot of rules. Everyone lies. Don't trust, verify. Wear gloves, you only get one shot at a crime scene. Learn to do it the old-fashioned way because technology isn't always your friend. Ask who benefits. Corollary: it's always the wife." Sarah smiles. "That last probably isn't helpful here."

"Probably not. What about never date a coworker?"

"That would be weird. Given the circumstances."

Sarah sits back down, pulls another case file but doesn't look at it. She says, "I keep tripping over the who benefits question. Before I was sure it was tied to the carjacking ring. Now there's a ransom demand, so maybe money's been the motive all along. Does that mean we're looking in the wrong place for the bad guy?"

"Good question." A good question for which Gibbs has no good answer yet. There are too many things bothering him right now, including why this cheerful young woman seems so familiar, and he can't ever seen to get them all lined up in one place so he can figure out what it all means.

And then Ziva's cellphone beeps. Not rings; beeps. "I have an email," she says.

It's from a gmail address that no one recognizes. It specifies coordinates and then: 500K Euro 50 & 100 notes 1 suitcase midnite come alone.

"Cosgrove, can you figure out where that email came from?"

"I'm backtracing it now."

"McGee, where are we on the money?"

"We can make the midnight deadline. But it'll be close, especially if the drop zone isn't in the area."

"It is," Abby says. "It's just north of town."

Sarah looks at the map. "It's maybe a klick east of the chop shop."

"Where'd that email come from?"

Sarah looks back at her computer. "That can't be right," she says.

McGee leans over. "But it is. Where is it?"

"It's a coffee shop right off base. Across the street from the main gate."

"Boss, we've got the VPN. We can identify the computer when we get there."

"Let's go. Cosgrove, you might get to roll a perp. No, Ziva, you stay here. Abby, go on preparing for the drop. I'm going to need something to go in that suitcase."

"Oh, Gibbs, I can make you something wonderful. With a timer. And lovely ink."


	14. Chapter 14 An international incident

14 An international incident

They go at a run and pick up the MPs from the gate. But the coffee shop is packed, and the user at their target computer is a teenaged girl. She yells out something in Spanish as they pull her away from the machine and then bursts into tears.

Cosgrove's Spanish is pretty good. She calms the girl down enough to get a story. "She says she's only been on the machine a few minutes. The café's always crowded at this hour. She says the user before her was a young man, mid 20s, blond. He didn't speak to her."

"Was he wearing long sleeves?"

Sarah frowns, but she asks anyway. "Yes, she thinks so."

It's not a woman's crime, Gibbs thinks, but bad guys have girlfriends. "I'm taking her in anyway. And I want that computer. Now."

Sarah talks to the other users in the area and only a few have any description at all; even those who noticed the man say he had only been on for a few minutes. Believe them? Or haul them all in? There's a drop in a few hours and so little preparation done.

"Get the computer, McGee. Cosgrove, you get the name and check the ID of everyone in here. Put one MP on the door and get the other to help. No one leaves until you're done."

"Gibbs, they don't have to show their IDs to us. And we can't legally detain them."

"How do you catch anyone around here? Cosgrove, you tell them a little girl has been kidnapped, and the son of a bitch that did it was sitting right there. If they want that girl on their conscience, they can keep their damned IDs. McGee, let's go."

McGee carries the computer and Gibbs drags the girl. Now there's a crowd on the street, booing and jeering. DiNozzo was wrong: he can't play ugly American flatfoot the way Gibbs can.

Back in interrogation, Gibbs is faced with a problem he hadn't considered: the girl claims to speak no English. "Ziva, I shouldn't do this to you. But can you talk to her?"

"Of course."

And Ziva, whose nerves must be long past the snapping point, talks gently to the girl, explaining the situation without mentioning that it is her little girl missing. The girl dries her tears but can't give a better description. She gives Ziva her contact information, Ziva calls her parents, and lets the girl go.

Gibbs watches from observation. He is torn between anger at himself, knowing that he'd lost control in the coffee house, and at the perp. A pro, and a cruel one. The taunting nature of the email, sending it from so close to the base, makes his blood run cold. Becks had been alive a few hours ago, but would such a man really let her go? Gibbs is in a foreign country, he has few resources, and there's no one he can really rely on. Abby and McGee are great technical supports, but he needs what Sarah would call a real police—someone who could watch his six but still pull him back. And why the hell hasn't Ducky called?

"Abby," he says.

"Working on the ink bomb."

"We need food."

"We do indeed."

"You think there's Chinese around?"

"Gibbs. There are Americans here. Of course there's Chinese."

"Find it. Get a lot of here. Before I create another international incident."

While they wait for the food, McGee prints out satellite maps of the drop zone. "There's a clearing right there. We can have pretty good surveillance."

"They'll have good surveillance, too. She'll be a sitting duck."

"Boss, are you really sending Ziva?"

"I don't know, Tim. I don't have many options here."

"Sarah's a pretty close match. Similar height and build. Long dark hair."

"Sarah doesn't have much experience. If anything goes wrong, she won't be able to get herself out of it."

"I'm not sure Ziva's in any state to get herself out of trouble, either."

Between the sword and the wall. If it goes badly, and Ziva is killed, he'll never forgive himself. What if Ziva has been a target all along? What if they've been wasting time running down stale NCIS cases? Perhaps it's not too late to call Eli David… But if Ziva doesn't go, and Rebecca isn't recovered, she'll never get over it. Gibbs knows that angle too well. "I'll think about it."

"It's the Kobayashi Maru," McGee says.

"I don't eat sushi, McGee."

"It's, um, Star Trek, for impossible ethical problem. Sorry, boss."

"Can we get live satellite coverage of the drop site? Infrared?"

"Maybe. But only from No Such Agency."

Gibbs groans. "I guess I'm calling Vance again."

Eating Chinese in the squadroom: So close to a thousand other nights and yet so wrong. There are strangers among them and one missing. At 10, the money arrives. Abby shows off her money bomb. "Of course we've got GPS in the suitcase and in some of the bundles. The ink bomb has a timer and a remote detonator. So you don't trigger it till the bad guy takes it, and it doesn't go off for another two hours."

"That's assuming he doesn't take the money out of the suitcase."

Abby smiles. "It's in the money, Gibbs, and I mean in the money. He'll be blue tomorrow. Dark blue. I can't wait to see the pattern. That picture is _definitely_ going on the lab wall."

At 10:30, Ziva stands. "Do you have an earwig for me, Abby? We should go. I need to stop by the hospital first."

"Are you sure about this, Ziva?" Gibbs asks. "Sarah could pass for you."

"And of course I want to," Sarah says.

Ziva shakes her head. "I have to do this."

Abby says softly, "Are you sure Tony would want you to?"

"He would absolutely not want me to. And he would absolutely do it himself."


	15. Chapter 15 Forty miles of bad road

15 Forty miles of bad road

They wait in the car while Ziva goes into the hospital alone. On her way out she asks Ducky to please, please find someone to wash Tony's hands. Becks will be frightened enough without seeing that. Back in the car she is trembling, excited that Rebecca will be back in an hour or two, worried that Tony is worse and Ducky has nothing encouraging to say. But she believes that Tony is waiting for Becks, and when his daughter is in the room, his eyes will open at last.

There are three cars, and they take up positions covering the open area but well back and well hidden. McGee has a mobile hotspot sync'd to the satellite of the dread unnamed agency. "Great coverage, boss, really great." He can see the three NCIS cars and nothing else. "Not even a mouse."

"We're early," Gibbs says. "Ziva, go right to the center of the clearing. Take your phone, too. He may send more directions by email." He sees her removing her service weapon and says, "You don't go out there unarmed."

"Take the cannoli, leave the gun," she says. "It's what Tony would say, yes? Gibbs, he might pat me down. It's not worth the risk. McGee, pass me the cannoli." And she trudges off into the center of the clearing. It is fifteen minutes before midnight.

It is a cool night. After a while she is blowing on her hands and stamping her feet a bit. At 12:15, Gibbs tells her to send an email: "I'm here w/money. More instructions?" But there are no more instructions. At 12:30, they can hear her crying softly. At 12:45, she sends another email. At 1, she begins shouting. "Where are you? What do you want? Your money is here. Come get it. You've already killed my husband. Kill me if you want. Take the money. Just send my daughter home."

In the backseat, McGee is crying, and Sarah too. Gibbs can hear what sounds like sniffling from the other cars. Abby, he feels certain, is crying too, alone in her lousy lab. "Anything on infrared, McGee?"

"Nothing, boss. Nothing this whole time."

Ziva has stopped shouting. Nor is she crying. She is sitting on the ground, very still. Gibbs gets out of the car and walks into the clearing. He holds out a hand and says to her, "Come in, Ziva."

There is no answer. She doesn't take his hand, but finally she stands, brushes herself off, and they walk back to the car.

"Allen and Burns will stay," Gibbs says. "We'll keep the area under surveillance all night."

"It doesn't matter," she says. "My daughter is dead. Please take me back to the hospital. I just want to be with Tony."

x x x

Back in the squadroom, Sarah and Abby hang onto each other like sisters, still crying. McGee is wiping his eyes when he thinks no one is watching. The agents who have spent the day running down BOLOs are blank and shocked.

Gibbs starts another pot of coffee. "I hope no one's planning on going home," he barks.

"What do you want us to do?"

"_Rebecca DiNozzo is not dead_. This is still a kidnapping. So work the case, damn it. This guy may be a sick bastard. Or he may have been picked up for driving without a license. He may be in an emergency room. Start looking. Cosgrove, in the morning you get those warrants signed. I don't care what time Judge Alhambra eats his breakfast, you get them signed. You—who are you and where the hell have you been?"

"Running down BOLOs. I'm Winfield Hancock the fifth."

"You—you're joking."

"No sir. My great great great grandfather was a Union general in the Civil War. Hancock the Superb."

Winfield Hancock. The Superb. The fifth. What could the man who came up with Probie Wan Kenobi do with that mouthful? "You take the hospital rooms and the local jail cells. Our perp is a male, mid 20s, Caucasian, blond hair. Scratches on an arm or arms. And what happened with the BOLO at the gas station?"

"Dad, son, and 12-year-old daughter."

"And you?" Gibbs says to the next agent.

"Mark Green. I've been with Win on the BOLOs."

"See if you can help Abby in the lab. McGee, find out what we can about that email address. When it was opened, where it was opened, anything. And Tim. Would that infrared have picked up a camera?"

"Probably not."

"Is there some other way to find out if there's a camera transmitting by wifi from there?"

"I can't think of a way. But we might be able to come up with something. And we can do an actual search in daylight. If he comes sooner for the camera we'll get him on the infrared. You think this whole thing was a setup just to torment Ziva?"

"I can't rule it out."

"Saleem," McGee says.

"I'm not ruling it out. Cosgrove. The carrier group is due in tomorrow—no, today. Every single ship has an NCIS agent on it. You get their names. We'll need help."

"What are you going to do, Agent Gibbs?" Cosgrove asks.

"I'm going to wake up the FBI and see if they know of any similar cases. And get a profiler on the job. And then I'm going to call Interpol and do the same."

"Let me know if you need any help," she says. And they are all tired and shell-shocked and heartsick, but the office is moving again.

x x x

Five a.m. is a hard, hard hour for those who are awake unwillingly, and there aren't many who are awake willingly. A fresh BOLO with the vague perp description and Rebecca's picture has been sent throughout Spain and to every airport and train station in Europe. Allen and Burns and a carful of MPs are still at the drop site, waiting for daylight. Abby and Green are trying to make sense of the print evidence on the café computer and hoping for a hit on the DNA sample. McGee has finally gotten access to the encrypted cellphone info. Hancock has checked the hospitals and local lockups and is out running down yet another BOLO with an MP for backup. Cosgrove is on the phone to LEOs in the U.S., trying to find the missing bad conduct discharges. Gibbs has talked to the FBI, Interpol, the Spanish state police, police forces in Gibraltar, Lisbon, Marseilles, and Naples, looking for information on kidnappers, carjackers, knifemen. For the last four hours they have all worked at frantic speed, and the coffee pot has been emptied for the fifth time.

Rebecca DiNozzo has been missing for 20 hours. They've gotten no news from the hospital. And they still have nothing solid.

McGee is yawning and rubbing his eyes. "The gmail account was opened yesterday from an internet café in Rota. Not the one by the base, one in the resort area in the western part of the city. The account has only been used once."

"Send Hancock to pick up the computer."

"The café's closed."

"Then find out who owns it and have Hancock wake him up."

"Will do. I haven't found anything interesting from Tony's cellphone." McGee hesitates, then says, "Do you think we should go to the hospital? To be with Ziva."

"I doubt she wants any company."

"Ducky probably does. He's been there all day and all night. And I have Ziva's phone. She left it in the car. She might need it."

"You have her phone?"

"No calls, no emails, no texts."

McGee is right. "Go get Abby."


	16. Chapter 16 You have to take this call

16 You really have to take this call

Seeing her face, Ducky knows better than to ask. Ziva comes into his arms briefly, and he feels the shudder that runs through her taut body. But she has done her crying in the field and she has no tears left. She shakes her head when he offers her food or drink, and again when he offers to go in with her. It is his turn to shake his head when she asks, "Tony?"

"My dear girl," is all he can manage. "My dear, dear girl." He isn't sure which girl he is referring to, for it seems they are both gone. And so he resumes his vigil outside the ICU room after she goes in.

There are no outside windows in the room. She has no idea how late it is, how long ago she had left all hope behind in that field. She can see, without Ducky telling her, that Tony is worse. His hand is no longer bloody, but it is lifeless, hot and dry, and his eyes dart restlessly behind his lids but do not open.

She had been so sure that bringing Becks to his room would solve everything. Now she is certain that he won't last the night. Perhaps it's best. She won't have to look at Tony and tell him that Rebecca is gone. And Rebecca won't be alone out there. Perhaps Tony would not have wanted to live in a world without his Becks. "If you want to go," she says softly, "go. I understand."

"Go?" he mutters. "I have a meeting at 10."

"Tony? Can you hear me?"

His eyes open at last, but they are too bright, a little unfocused. "You don't have a dentist appointment."

The nosiest man in the world. "No," she says. "I don't. I will stay right here."

"Campfire at 10. Don't be late."

"I won't be."

He frowns. "There's a shark. But I can't remember."

"There is no shark."

"Shark. Why can't I remember?"

"You have seen Jaws too many times."

"I have to remember."

"Don't worry. Tony, please look at me." He does, finally. "I love you."

He frowns again. "Is it leap year?"

This makes no sense to her. So she shushes him and strokes his coxcomb hair, still bristly. And then his hand tightens on hers, crushingly hard, and his eyes are open and focused. "Becks. I lost her," he says. "I lost her. The car."

"You didn't lose her," she says. "We found her hours ago. She's fine."

"Ziva. I lost Becks. I couldn't hold onto the car."

"She's fine. Gibbs is here. She's fine. I'll bring her to see you in the morning when you're better."

She has never lied to him well. He has always pried out even her small secrets. She smiles for him and hopes she's doing better this time. But it feels false to her, and it must to him. "I lost her," he says again. "Becks. I lost her."

"She's fine. Please, Tony, just rest. She's fine. I'll bring her to you in the morning."

The urgency goes out of him, and he mutters once more, "Campfire. Very important."

"We will all be there, Mr. Large and In Charge."

"You lucky woman." He smiles, almost like his real smile, and looks at her. "You don't have a dentist appointment."

"No, and you are the nosiest man in the world. Just close your eyes and rest a bit. I will be right here."

His grip loosens but not entirely, and she tries to tell herself it's a good sign.

x x x

Abby, too, goes into Ducky's arms, but she doesn't launch herself at him as she usually does. "It was awful. Awful, awful, awful. And we have _nothing_."

Abby looks at the ICU, but Ducky shakes his head. "Leave her be for now." She and McGee go for coffee.

Gibbs and Ducky watch the still figures in the ICU room. "How is he?"

"Worse. But we shall know for certain in the next few hours."

"Will _she_ make it, Ducky?"

"If Tony lives she has a chance, I think. She survived Somalia."

"She didn't have Tony then."

"Of course she did. She knew he had gone to Somalia for her. After that it was inevitable."

"I seem to remember them both dating other people."

"Dating isn't love."

"You're turning into a romantic, Ducky."

"I'm 76 years old. I'm entitled. We see so many awful things in our line of work that it becomes easy to forget the power of the good things. The beautiful things. So I'll enjoy my late romanticism." He sighs. "Is there no hope for Rebecca?"

"There's hope. I don't know how much. I keep feeling like there's something I've seen but can't quite remember, and that's the piece I need."

"The _presque vu_, as the French would call it. The almost seen. What we catch out of the corner of our eye."

The MTAC conference. Why is that always in the corner of his eye? But now it is McGee in the corner of his eye, juggling two coffees and a phone. And then coffees are dropped, and McGee is running, right into the ICU. "Ziva, you have to take this call."

She turns, cold and furious. "I am not taking any calls. Especially if it's that sick, gloating bastard."

"Ziva, you really, really have to take this call." McGee puts it on speaker and holds it up.

"Mommy, where are you? I'm home. Why aren't you here? Where's Babbo? Where's Ducky?"


	17. Chapter 17 Square knots are so reliable

17 Square knots are so reliable

In the car she is white-faced and tense, not willing to believe until she can see. Ducky beams and pats his comforting little pats. "There, my dear, it will all work out. You'll see. We shall _all_ be fine. Better than fine."

The Charleses are a bit put out about the window, and she assures them that of course they will pay for the window, and of course Rebecca won't be breaking any more windows. "There's been quite the uproar," Ducky tells them. "Haven't you been watching the news?"

"We don't watch the news," Mrs. Professor Charles says. "We do hope they won't make a habit of letting a child that young roam the streets at night. Quite impossible. Americans!"

Becks's face is grimy, as if she's been crying, and she's angry and upset, but with Ziva and Ducky in sight she's already righting herself. "I want Babbo," she says. "I want my Bunny."

"Of course, of course, we will get Bunny, and then we'll go see Babbo." She cannot bear to let Becks go, so she carries her up the two flights of stairs. She finds Bunny. And she pauses at the open door to their bedroom, seeing the half-made bed and a towel that's fallen off the hook on the bathroom door. She wants to go pick up the towel and breathe it in, knowing it will smell of her and him and their life here. The sun is beginning to show in the east-facing windows. It has been just one day. She wonders how they will ever go back to that life, if things will ever be better than fine.

"I lost my tiara."

"We will get you a new one."

"I want my pink shoes."

"Of course you do, my darling." The pink shoes are on the landing, and she notices then that Becks's sneakers are still firmly tied. Tony must have tied them for her, because Becks can't do a square knot. They have stayed tied all through this terrible day.

"Mommy, you're crying."

"I missed you, my darling."

"Didn't you ever miss me before?"

"Never so much as this."

After Ducky and Ziva leave, Gibbs turns back to McGee. "What the hell?"

"Ziva and Tony live on the top two floors. The Charleses live on the bottom two floors. About fifteen minutes ago they heard knocking, but it was early and they thought it was a prank. Then someone broke a window. That got them downstairs. Rebecca was on the doorstep. Luckily she knows Ziva's cell number."

"A five-year-old girl broke a window?"

"She threw a rock. She was very upset that no one was answering the door."

"I can see why she would be. Let me guess: no one saw anything."

"No one saw anything."

"We'll have to canvass the neighborhood in the morning. McGee, does this case make any sense to you at all?"

"No, boss."

"Call the NCIS office and tell them the kidnapping's over but the investigation isn't. We still have a kidnapper at large."

With both Ducky and Ziva gone, he goes into ICU and stands by the bed. Eventually DiNozzo starts muttering about his campfire at 10. "Campfire?" Gibbs says. "You still call it that? Can't you at least call it a huddle?"

"Not all women know football." Tony groans, opens his eyes a bit. "God, it must be real. I lost her."

"Yep. You tried damned hard to hang onto her, though."

"Ziva…she was lying, wasn't she? You didn't find her."

"I didn't find her. What do you remember?"

"God, I lost her," he whispers.

"DiNozzo," he says, and his voice is cold and hard because it has to be. "Focus. What do you remember?"

"Blond guy. Polo shirt. Golf course logo. Said I couldn't park there."

"That's it?"

"I couldn't hold onto the car."

"Did you recognize him?"

"No. Never saw the knife. My God, Ziva. Becks. I couldn't hold onto the car."

"Blond guy? Nothing more?"

"Mid or late 20s, medium build. Five-nine. Brown eyes. Not Spanish."

"Why not?"

"The accent. Russian, maybe. I couldn't hold onto the car."

"DiNozzo," Gibbs says. "Stop it."

"I can't. What day is it? How long has she been gone?"

"She's not gone, DiNozzo."

And there are three hard little smacks on the glass, and on the other side is Becks, still in her mother's arms, pressing her nose against the glass.

"You said you didn't find her."

"I didn't find her. She found us. Some kid you got there."

On his way out, Gibbs says to Ziva, "I'll need to talk to her while it's still fresh."

Ziva nods and then goes in. Gibbs closes the door behind them and guides Ducky away. "I think they want a little privacy."

"Just imagine what might have happened if I hadn't made it to the big O this morning," Ducky says, still beaming.

"I have no idea what you're saying, Duck, but enjoy the moment."


	18. Chapter 18 Never go without a knife

18 Never go anywhere without a knife

A few minutes later, Ziva brings out Becks, not happy at leaving her father but happy with the prospect of some breakfast. Ducky has found juice boxes and cereal for his girls. After the Cheerios are gone, Gibbs sits down with them. "I'm Gibbs," he says.

Her eyes go wide. "Never go anywhere without a knife!"

"Your daddy tell you that?"

"Yes. But he won't let me have a knife."

"You old enough for a knife?"

"I'm five. If I had a knife I wouldn't play that stupid game. They'd be afraid of me."

"What was the stupid game, Becks?"

"The man takes Babbo's car. I thought he hurted Babbo but he says it's a game. The game is for Babbo's job so I say ok." She straightens up, very proud. "Everyone on base works for my daddy. He's large and in charge."

Gibbs smiles. "Yes, he is. What happened then?"

"We left the clown car and he broke the iPhone."

"What did it look like, where you left the clown car?"

"Trees. Lots of trees. No road. It was bumpy."

"What happened after you left the clown car?"

"He put a thing over my eyes and I couldn't see and he says it's the game. And we drove some more in another car."

"What color was the car?"

"I don't know."

"Was it bigger than the clown car?"

"I don't know."

"Then what?"

"We drove some more. And then we stopped at a house. But he closed the door and I was all alone. And I couldn't see nothing and I didn't get nothing to eat for a long time. Then he let me talk to Mommy. Then I was all alone again. You didn't come get me, Mommy."

"We didn't know where you were. But we were looking for you."

"Then the man put me in the car again."

"Was it the same man?"

She thinks. "I don't know."

"Then what?"

"We drove. Then he puts me out of the car and says count to twenty and you can take off the blindfold. You're home." She straightens up again, this time proud of herself. "I didn't count to twenty."

"Smart girl. When did you take off the blindfold?"

"When the car door closed. It was dark and I wasn't home but I could see our house. And I knocked and knocked and no one answered. So I threw the rock."

"Did you see that in a movie?"

"Yes. You throw rocks and make wishes and they come true. We have caramel popcorn."

Becks is yawning now and twisting around to see into the ICU.

"That was a mean game, Becks. Your daddy didn't want to play a game like that and he didn't want you to have to play it either. But it's over now. You won't play that game again."

"It was mean." For the first time in the interview she seems upset. "They hurt Babbo."

"It's over now, and they're not going to hurt anyone else. You're a very smart and brave girl. Your mommy and daddy are very proud of you."

She smiles a big smile this time, showing all her baby teeth. He has seen that smile everywhere the last day or so. In person it's even more DiNozzo.

He fishes something out of his pocket. "This is for you, Becks. Do you know what it is?"

She gasps. "It's my knife!"

"It is. Your mommy will show you how to use it some day."

"Mommy, it's _pink_!"

"Gibbs," Ziva says, "she is too young."

"She can't hurt herself with it."

"Tony will be so happy to live with two women with knives."

"Keep him on his toes."

Ziva strokes Becks's hair and wipes the milk off her mouth. "I'm just happy he still has toes. That makes no sense."

"I understand. Ziva, you and Becks need to stay on base. I think they can set you up near the ICU, but until we know what's going on you're safer here."

"I don't care," Ziva says. "I don't even want a bed. How does that sound, my darling? Let's go take a nap in the chair in Babbo's room."


	19. Chapter 19 Rota Naval Station

19 Rota Naval Station will be open

McGee and Abby are still outside ICU. Abby has been using her cellphone to record the reunion and she's uploading. "Becks is awesome," Ziva says. "She's such a little Tony-Ziva. She breaks windows and rocks out the pink mules. She's going to be the greatest NCIS agent ever someday. I got your interrogation, too, Gibbs."

McGee says, "Um, boss, Allen and Burns canvassed the drop area. No, cameras, but they found Tony's car. It's being towed in. We'll get on it ASAP."

"Of course they found the car. Now that the girl's back, the perp will probably walk in and surrender. Make sure they bring that ransom money with them. And Abs, don't forget to check the carseat for prints. I need some real coffee. I'll meet you up with you in the office."

Gibbs asks one of the MPs where he can find coffee. He takes a walk through early morning Rota, finds good strong-smelling coffee, and has some breakfast. He gets another coffee to go. He deliberately doesn't think about the case, all the dangling ends, all the leads that still must be followed up, all the things that just don't make sense.

He pauses at the main gate of the base, looking over the MPs in their boxes, the jumble of low-slung, undistinguished-looking buildings. There's no place on earth that you're as likely to find order as on a base like this, here and in the harbor beyond where even now great ships and large crews are at work, pulling into line and dropping anchor in the lee of the Bay of Cadiz. The apparent disorder and the underlying harmony, the hugeness of the effort and the predictability of the result, are familiar and calming.

And then he heads back to the office. He looks straight ahead, neither to the left nor the right, hoping that the thing at the corner of his eye will show itself cleanly at last.

McGee and Abby go back to the office and take Ducky, promising him the couch in Tony's office. They are alone now but for the MPs outside the door. Becks sleeps, Tony dozes, but Ziva can't yet relax. One hand keeps Becks close against her shoulder; the other is entwined in Tony's. They are all together at last, but the agent in her, and the frightened wife-mother as well, knows that this is not finished.

Eventually, Tony wakes. "Ziva. Could you switch to the other side?"

"Of course." She takes up her position on the left side of the bed. "Is your other hand tired?"

"Of you? Never. But I need your cellphone. I'll be filling out requisition forms for a month before Vance gives me another one."

"Tony. Are you mad? A few hours ago you were _dying_. You are not going to work."

"I'm not dying now. I don't have the nerve to die in front of you two. And there are a few things that I have to get done."

"Others can do it. Gibbs is here, and McGee, and Abby. And our people have done so well, Tony."

"But they don't know what needs to happen today. I do. Please."

"No."

"Ziva. Ziva." He sighs and takes her hand. "For a little while, I need you to let me pretend that this hasn't happened, that everything's still all right. Just a little while."

She thinks: so he worries too, that somehow it is all gone, ruined. "All right," she says. "But only for a little while." And she gives him the phone.

He calls Sarah Cosgrove. "I bet Gibbs is running you ragged. But you still work for me, and I need three things from you. Text me Director Vance's personal cell number. Send it to Ziva's cell. Text me the number for Major Stein at the MP office. And tell everyone I need them here in an hour. No, um, we'll call it a morning huddle. And then you can get back to learning Gibbs's rules."

Vance still isn't much on pleasantries. "Agent David, I told you to not interfere in this investigation."

"It's DiNozzo, sir. I've lost my phone, my car, my daughter, and apparently all sense of the time difference."

"Let me remind you: it's seven hours."

"My apologies."

"Not dead yet?"

"No, but still pining for the fjords."

"In that case this had better not be a long squawk."

"Good come back, sir, and it's nice to know you're a fan."

"Where is your daughter, Tony?"

"About three feet away."

"They took the ransom money?"

"No, she assures me that she engineered her own daring escape."

"Try and be serious."

"I don't know, sir. I suspect it was a Ransom of Red Chief situation."

"What the hell is going on there?"

"I'll let Agent Gibbs bring you up to date on the investigation of my near-death experience. I just want to assure you that Rota Naval Station will be open today as expected for the call of the carrier fleet."

"You sure about that?"

"Yes, director."

"If anything changes, call me. But if you call before noon your time, someone's hair better be on fire."

"Understood, sir. Is there any chance you could FedEx me a new phone?"

"Fill out the forms. And Tony. I'm happy to hear about your daughter."

"Thank you, sir, but not as happy as I am."

"Look on the bright side of life, DiNozzo."

Tony closes the phone. "That man is _good_." He looks at Ziva. "What else was I going to do?"

"You were going to close your eyes and rest a bit."

"Good plan." But first he pulls out a lock of Ziva's hair and lays it over a lock of Becks's. "Exact same color." He closes his eyes. "Don't go running off to the dentist."


	20. Chapter 20 Sherlock Sciuto

20 Sherlock Sciuto

Abby is getting back to her usual self, having found something black to wear, her hair back up in pigtails and her eyeliner on. "I'm just about finished with the car, Gibbs. Wanna know what I found?"

"Of course."

"No fingerprints. There was a cotton-poly blend jacket found on the ground near the car. The perp probably carried it—it would have hidden the knife."

"The jacket could be DiNozzo's."

"Gibbs, please. I think I know Tony's style better than that. Anyway, the perp probably used his jacket to wipe the car for prints. He even used it to open the back door, because there's some blood on it."

"So you got nothing."

"Gibbs, when do I give you nothing? The perp was smart enough to wipe down the car but he didn't reckon with the infuriating complexity of the modern child seat." Abby opens the car door. "See, you have to reach over the seat to undo the latch. I've got nearly full print from the left hand here and the right thumb and forefinger from the latch."

"Got a match?"

"Not yet. And I'm not finished. Ziva says that Tony always leaves an NCIS hat and jacket in the car, along with some crime scene stuff. The crime scene kit is in the car, but the NCIS gear is gone."

"This guy really thinks he can pass himself off as an NCIS agent?"

"Look at the description: 20s, blond, medium build. With sunglasses on he could be Win Hancock. If he's changed his hair color he could be Bill Burns or Mark Green. He might even be tall enough to pass for Tony at a distance. And that's assuming that he's going to try and pass himself off here on base, where someone would actually know the NCIS agents."

"He could get a fake badge anywhere. And even the credentials could be copied well enough to pass a routine inspection. That might be useful."

"There's more."

"Not in the mood for guessing, Abs."

"Doesn't this seem strange to you? The perp just walks up and shivs Tony and drives off with him hanging on the car. Very cold. He makes a ransom call and leaves Ziva out there in the dark crying and screaming. _Very_ cold. But Becks barely has a mark on her. And she came home with her backpack. Someone had to have picked up her backpack from the car and put it back on her when she was dropped off. We have a Jekyll and Hyde situation. The perp has two completely different personalities."

"No," Gibbs says. "The perp is two different people, Abs. That's good thinking."

"There's also the matter of the missing tiara."

"We're going from Jekyll and Hyde to Sherlock Holmes?"

Abby pulls up a photo on her iPad of Rebecca in her pink heels and tiara. "Ducky said she left the house wearing the tiara. He said Tony said, Take the tiara, leave the cannoli. You know how Tony loves his Godfather references."

"It could have fallen off in the car."

"It wasn't in the car. It wasn't at the scene. It wasn't where the car was found." She smiles. "I think I know where the tiara is."

"Abby…"

"I think it's in Becks's backpack. I need the backpack anyway, because I need to check that for prints too."

"You'll get it. I don't suppose they have Caf-Pow here."

"They have it at the base commissary, and I'm shocked that you waited so long to make sure I was supplied." She waves at a neat row of seven plastic cups. "I'm putting them on the office tab."

"You keep drinking, I'll pay."

The picture on Abby's iPad leads Gibbs back to Tony's office, and the frame with the rotating pictures. Tony's frame is larger and more colorful, and it shows brief movies as well as still pictures, and there's sound along with the movies.

Sarah Cosgrove joins him. "We gave that to Tony as a birthday present. He had pictures taped up all over the place and it was driving his office assistant crazy. Also," Sarah is more sheepish, "Tony was using up the inkjet cartridges really fast, printing all those pictures."

Gibbs smiles. That sounds familiar. "This is different from the ones that Ziva gave to Abby and Ducky."

"This is brand new, more like a prototype. A friend of mine came up with the idea. Digital frames have been around for ages, but this one runs gifs and HD video as well."

Gibbs is again struck with the sense that this young woman reminds him of someone, and again the name eludes him. "You really like your boss, don't you, Agent Cosgrove?"

"Yes, I do. He's a very good investigator. He's a good boss, although his sense of humor can be really hard to get used to. They're—they make a very nice family." She smiles, more impishly. "They say there's a direct and positive correlation between humor and intelligence. You have to be quick-witted to make jokes."

"I can imagine where you heard that from."

"You'd be right." Sarah gives him a wide-eyed, innocent look. "That was the question you wanted answered, wasn't it? You weren't really asking if I'm having an affair with Tony, are you? Because we've heard about what a tricky interrogator you are."

"I know you're not having an affair."

"I could be boiling the bunny out of disappointment."

"You're not boiling the bunny, either."

"Dang. It was kind of exciting to think that Agent Gibbs was considering me as a criminal mastermind. But just to clarify, I have a boyfriend in Seville. He's actually the one who came up with the idea of the frame."

"Which is why you're not interested in having coffee with McGee."

"Which is why I'm not interested in having coffee with McGee. Should we get back to business?"

"Please." He looks at the frame. "Even a casual visitor could have seen these photographs from the main office. There's even one of the Smart Car."

"True. Or anyone at the MTAC conferences. Should we widen the search to include all conference techs?"

"I hope not. What about those warrants?"

"Too early. No business gets done off base before 10am—even for you, Agent Gibbs. But I have something I think might make you decide that you don't need those warrants."

"Which is?"

"I've gotten the list of NCIS agents aboard the carrier group. And I thought this was really interesting. There are three NCIS agents aboard the Reagan. Only one is actually officially assigned as agent afloat. One of the other agents is Chad Dunham."

"Chad from Chad." And Gibbs thinks that thing in the corner of his eye has just moved in a little. "That's good work, Agent Cosgrove. I'll be at the base hospital."

"Tony wants us all there in an hour."

"For a campfire?"

"He said we'd call this a morning huddle. It's football season. Isn't it?" She frowns.

"I'll see you in an hour, Cosgrove."


	21. Chapter 21  Everyone goes to Rick's

21 Everyone goes to Rick's

Gibbs closes the door to the ICU room hard enough to wake Tony, though he doesn't drop the phone. Becks goes on sleeping. Gibbs sits down. "We're making pretty good progress on figuring out who tried to kill you yesterday. And I think I'm getting pretty close to figuring out why."

Gibbs is smiling, almost laughing. "You are a piece of work, Special Agent in Charge DiNozzo. You told me a long time ago that arresting you in Baltimore would be the biggest screw up in my career. You're wrong. This is easily the biggest screw up of my career. But I've finally had a decent cup of coffee and I think my head's clearing.

"Here's my mistake. I investigated this case as if you were Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS. We turned over all your casefiles, reinvestigated the chop shop. We turned out the cell of that lab rat in Baltimore. We had cells in Leavenworth tossed. We got nothing, because I'd forgotten that you're not an NCIS special agent."

"It's _very_ special agent, but go on," Tony says.

"You're NCIS's special agent in charge, Rota Naval Base. Rota's not the biggest base. But it has a unique distinction. Every U.S. ship entering the Med calls at Rota. Every U.S. ship exiting the Med calls at Rota. Every single one."

"Everyone goes to Rick's," Tony says.

"And that makes you an interesting person. You weren't carjacked because you busted a chop shop or turned up a meth lab. You were attacked because attacking you left the NCIS office without a leader the day before a carrier group drops anchor. Kidnapping your daughter was a diversion that threw the entire base into an uproar. You want uproar? Wait till you hear what I did last night. It's the kind of mistake agents get fired for, and not just probies.

"We got an email from the kidnapper, sent from an internet café just outside the main gate. Of course we went in pursuit. And what did I do? I caused a near-riot. You'll be writing that one up for weeks. But that's not all I did. _I took the MPs from the main gate_. For ten minutes the gates to Rota were wide open. The kidnapper sent the email and waited for an opportunity to get on the base. And I gave it to him."

"Have you ever thought about just dropping Rule 10?" Tony asks. "It's like the speed limit. Everyone breaks it."

"I've screwed up big time," Gibbs says. "And so I can try and salvage this, you're going to tell me why the hell Chad from Chad is on the Reagan."

"Chad's on the Reagan?" Ziva asks. "You didn't tell me. You can't still be jealous."

"Oh, I can still be jealous, but that's not it," Tony says. "I was going to tell you yesterday. It's a long story, and I know how you love my long stories. Hassan Riza is Iranian, mother's a Kurd. The family left Iran just after the revolution, settled in the U.S. and became citizens. He got a degree in nuclear engineering from CalTech. But somewhere along the line he had a religious experience and he defected to Iran in '98. Where, given his education, he was welcomed with song and dance and probably 72 virgins. Or 76 trombones. I can never remember which it is.

"But he ran out of virgins, or maybe our Hassan is just one of those grass-is-always-greener kind of guys, and three years ago he started passing information."

"To Chad."

"To Chad. The Iranians are nosing around everywhere in western Asia and Northern Africa. That's how contact got made. But about a year ago we lost our cutout. Not sure whether Hassan was alive or dead, but we'd heard there was a fatwa issued, so we hoped he'd just gone to ground. He has Kurdish relatives, so we thought he might be in Iraq. But we've got really good contacts with the Iraqi Kurds and we never turned up anything. There was a chance he was in Turkey, but we don't have real good ties there, and it's an ally and a democracy, so we couldn't just go bigfooting around."

"And then there was an earthquake."

"And then there was an earthquake. Part of the Fifth was chopped to the Med for humanitarian assistance. Leon Vance decided it was the perfect opportunity to start sniffing around. Not just for Hassan, it was just too good a general opportunity to pass up. It took a while, but they turned up Hassan about two weeks ago and stashed him on the Reagan."

"Why put him on an aircraft carrier? Why not just fly him out?"

"The infrastructure's terrible because of the earthquake. No landing facilities nearby. But mostly we just didn't want to draw attention to him."

"Why did you not ask Mossad?" Ziva asks.

"I don't know. Maybe we did. But Mossad might have stolen him, or, worse, killed him. In any case Mossad attractions attention sometimes, and that's just what we didn't want."

"So what's the plan?" Gibbs asks.

"He gets off at Rota, we fly him out from here with no one the wiser. We have eight thousand sailors coming ashore on liberty. We'll have a dozen cargo flights in and out every day. No one will notice." He smiles. "Everyone comes to Rick's. And there _is_ gambling in Casablanca."

"You've done this before."

"Occasionally. The docks at Norfolk are huge and full of civilian contractors. There are eyes everywhere and privacy's hard to come by. Rota is unique. Every single person on this base is either in the U.S. armed forces or is a U.S. government employee or dependent. We don't have a single civilian contractor on base. We don't have a single local working on base. Even the commissary and the kitchens are run by the Navy. All deliveries are dropped at the main gate. And the area surrounding the base is flat. It's impossible to get a good pair of eyes on the base unless it's from overhead, and we have other friends to make sure that's not happening."

"So that's why McGee was able to get the infrared satellite with so little notice. Extraordinary renditions?"

"Yes, but mostly money or equipment. The stuff can be loaded somewhere nice and quiet and moved here, along with all the usual cargo. Same thing in the other direction."

To Ziva, Gibbs asks, "Did you know about this?"

"About the transfers? Yes. The others do not."

Tony says, "She's my best agent." He smiles. "And I suspect she will never be a nun."

Ziva smiles back. "You have broken the Sound of Music rule."

"Okay, when this is all over, you get to sing one verse of My Favorite Things. But I prefer the X-rated version."

Gibbs says, "You might want to dial back on the painkillers. Ziva, I think it's time that Aunt Abby introduces Becks to Caf-Pow. You two go back to the office. You can come back with the others."

"Are you shutting out the womenfolk?"

"We have to talk, very seriously, about your office mates. I know they're your friends."

"It won't be anything I haven't heard Tony say already."

"You don't know that, and I don't want to wonder if he's held something back. And Abby needs the backpack. There might be print evidence."

Ziva looks to Tony, but he nods. She gathers up the still-sleeping Becks and her backpack. "You are not cutting me out of this." She slams the door as hard as Gibbs had.


	22. Chapter 22 Tony's people

22 Tony's people

"They are so going to make me pay for that door."

Gibbs notices that, with Ziva gone, something has gone out of Tony. His face is pale and he holds himself stiffly, as if to avoid even slight movement. "You've already dialed back on the painkillers."

"You know how loopy I get. Tomorrow I plan to be Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds high. Not today."

Gibbs sits in the chair Ziva's just left. "There's a leak somewhere. Someone knows about your plan for Hassan."

"It didn't come from our end."

"How'd you get the information?"

"Last week Vance mentioned some new directives at a teleconference. That's my heads up, but only in a general way. I got a call from him last Friday to go over the details. Then I got an email message from him yesterday reminding me to file my personnel 52s. That's my confirmation."

"Where'd you take the phone call?"

"In the bullpen. On speakerphone. I know you think I'm incompetent, but I'm not _that_ stupid. In my office with the door closed on my encrypted phone. We're probably not the only agency using the earthquake as cover to snoop. Someone else in Turkey could have spotted Hassan. There are five thousand sailors on the Reagan alone. One of them could be a double. Or could have passed on information innocently."

"But they wouldn't know about the Rota transfer stunt."

"Other agencies might know, however hard we've tried to keep things quiet. Or they might just be taking a flyer, hoping that Hassan will get off at Rota, or there'll be an opportunity to get on the Reagan."

"Killing you and kidnapping your daughter is quite a flyer."

"He's a high-value target. People take big risks for high-value targets."

"Your people are mostly young, not much experience with the agency or law enforcement."

"They've all been vetted. I know them. And I know hinky when I smell hinky."

"Okay, okay. Tell me about your people. How do I use them?"

"Tawan is the best guy. He's smart and he can scrap. He'll push back but in a good way. You want him on your six."

"Burns."

"Smart. Very smart, though kind of by-the-book. Not the best guy in a fight. He'll snark a little but take orders and he can execute. And if you put Burns and Allen together? Comedy gold."

"I'm sure that'll come in handy. Green."

"Utility infielder, sixth-man. Good all arounder. Jack of all trades, master of none. But every team needs one of those."

"Hancock."

"He's your armory. There's not a weapon been made that he can't use and use well. I wonder why his great great great grandfather didn't just snipe Robert E. Lee."

"Cosgrove."

"Sarah." Tony sighs. "Very smart girl, very good with tech stuff—she's our McGeek. Dad was NYPD, very much wants to be in law enforcement."

"But."

"But. You know who she reminds me of? Kate. So smart. So promising. But she looks in Ari Haswari's eyes and sees a lost puppy. She's dating some part-time grad student in Seville. _Alleged_ grad student. He's probably stealing her credit cards as we speak."

Kate Todd. Oh, yes. Smart, good questions, a bit of impish humor. She even looks like Kate. He wonders if that's why DiNozzo had hired her, and kept her on despite his doubts. Could distrust be learned? Eventually and unevenly. But instinct: you have it or you don't.

Gibbs says, "Abby thinks there's two perps, and I think she's right. I think the man that stabbed you is the man who's on base and is after Hassan. But I think there's someone else involved—maybe someone who wasn't willing to see Rebecca hurt. That's why I pressed you on your people. I could see even a double agent being hesitant to harm a child he knows well."

"It's not one of my people," Tony says. "None of them knew about the transfers, and even Ziva didn't know about Hassan until this morning."

"You really keep secrets like that from Ziva?"

"Yes. Screw Rule 12. I'm with the one person in the world who gets my job and what it means. I don't have to explain why I do what I do. And even if I did tell her, she'd never spill. It's not one of my people, Gibbs."

"Not intentionally," Gibbs says quietly.

"Not one of my people."

There is a pause, and then Gibbs asks, "What do we do with Ziva?"

Tony's mouth gets even narrower and tighter and he turns away, but Gibbs can see the struggle play out on his face. He has just come within a breath of losing his life and his child, and those wounds, especially the latter, are fresh and raw. His instinct has to be to grab his wife and child and hunker down. But he has sixteen years in as an agent, four as an SAIC, and Gibbs knows just how much that means to Anthony DiNozzo. The SAIC knows what's at stake; the field agent knows how much Ziva may be needed today.

To himself Tony says, "It's too much." But when he turns back to Gibbs, he says, "She's in. Use her as you think best. She'll get in anyway."

"Okay."

"Paula Cassidy."

"It's not the same."

"We sure know a lot of dead people."

Tony's fists are tightly balled, his shoulders drooped. He looks defeated. Gibbs lays a hand on Tony's shoulder. "Tony. Your people are here." And Tony takes a breath and pulls himself back together.


	23. Chapter 23 Jethro and Anthony

23 Jethro and Anthony solve the crime

And it's all his people, because Becks is there, one hand in Ziva's, the other in Ducky's, along with his Rota agents and McGee. But Abby is leading the charge. "Tony! You weren't awake before. Just one hug. I'll be gentle." And she is. "You're too skinny. What is she feeding you?"

"Twigs. Do you have a Caf-Pow?"

"Do I ever."

Ducky says, "Absolutely not."

"Okay, but you're going to have to start buying it, because Becks is a big fan, right?"

"Great," Tony mutters. "She came pre-caffeinated, Abby."

"I brought you my iPad. I know your phone is wrecked, so I downloaded Tetris for you. And I pulled a bunch of photos from our database and from Interpol for you. Maybe our guy is in there." She puts on her best Gibbs voice. "That's good thinking, Abs."

"It is," Gibbs admits. Then he updates them on the case, Tony gives them the details about Hassan and the Reagan, and then they start planning.

"We know he has an NCIS jacket and hat, so no one wears NCIS gear today. Everyone will be dressed as MPs," Gibbs says.

"Major Stein," Tony says. "I haven't called him yet." He opens the phone, stares at it for a long moment, then says, "Agent Cosgrove."

His voice is so cold and hard that everyone jumps. Even Ziva has never heard that tone. "The email from rbv5757 at gmail dot com," Tony says.

"We checked it out," Sarah says. "Sent from the internet café by the main gate last night. The account was opened a day before from another café in the western party of the city. We've picked up the computer but haven't had time to print it."

"Getting prints off those internet café computers takes forever," Abby says. "We've barely finished the first one."

"Not the address that it was sent from. The address it was sent _to_." Tony holds up the phone. "Any jackass can figure out her work address. But not many people know that she's rivkaima at gotophoto dot com. This is the account she uses to send out pictures." He turns to Ziva. "Your mailing list is what, ten people? How does this guy know that address?"

"You sent out Krismukkah cards last year," Abby says.

"Not from that address," Ziva says. "I downloaded the photo and made the card offline. I used my gmail account to mail it. Tony's right, only about ten people."

McGee says, "No one noticed the receiving address, Tony."

"I'm not asking you, Tim. I'm asking Agent Cosgrove."

"Tony, I'm sorry. I just never—I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize," Tony says. "Understand. This is what you're good at. We rely on you for this stuff. And now we've lost a lot of time."

"I never forwarded anything from that address, Ziva," Sarah says. "Never."

This surprises even Tony. "You're on the mailing list?"

"Ziva sent me the pictures to set up your digital frame."

And now it's all falling into place. It had all been there in the MTAC conference. If he'd ever actually watched it again, would he have put it together sooner? "Special Agent in Charge DiNozzo," Gibbs says, but he's watching Cosgrove. "What's the name of that agent you fired in January?"

"Peter Hamilton."

"Why did you fire him?"

"He wasn't a good fit with the team."

Gibbs rolls his eyes. "In English, DiNozzo, not Vance-speak."

"He was hinky. I didn't like him."

"What happened after that?"

"He protested the firing and lost. He was just a probationary agent and I didn't have to give good cause. Though Vance gave me hell over the cost of the protest."

"Where is he now?"

"He was in DC for the protest hearing in April. After that, I have no idea."

Tawan Allen puts up his hands. "Don't we have more important matters to worry about?"

"Hush, dear boy," Ducky says. "Jethro and Anthony are solving the crime."

Tony groans. "Oh, God. He's the grad student in Seville, isn't he?"

Gibbs smiles. "Afraid so. He's also the inventor of a unique digital frame that shows HD video. And I suspect it's a bug as well."

Sarah is shaking her head. "No, no, no. Yes, I started seeing Peter this summer, and yes, the frame was his idea. But he would never do anything like this. Never. He liked Becks, we all do. He would never hurt her."

"But he would take part in a conspiracy to kill Tony and open the base to a terrorist," Gibbs says.

"Look," Sarah says, "Peter was really upset about being fired. And Tony, you _were_ really unfair. Peter's not your kind of guy—"

"Because Tony is not the _kind of guy_ that would conspire to murder and the kidnapping of a child," Ziva says.

"—but he would never do something like this. Never."

"What's his cellphone number?" Tony asks.

Sarah gives it to them. "McGee," Gibbs says. "Find him. When did you last you see Hamilton, Agent Cosgrove?"

"The weekend. He's in Seville. He has classes in the morning and works afternoons."

"Boss, he's a few blocks from here." McGee shows the map to Gibbs and Tony.

Gibbs says, "He's not in Seville, and I'm betting that's your apartment."

"Hancock, Green," Tony says. "Pick him up. Make sure you get the car and any computer gear. Get on the horn to Seville and have them seal his apartment there."

"We don't have a warrant," Green says.

"He'll surrender," Tony says. "He'll want to show off. He'll think he can wiggle out of this."

"If he doesn't surrender?"

"Then you stay on him until we get you a warrant," Gibbs says. "Good thing your boss has that golfing buddy."

Sarah is holding back tears. "Tony—Ziva—Agent Gibbs. I don't think Peter has anything to do with this. I know I don't. If I am involved it was never intentional. I would never do anything to hurt any of you. Or to hurt anyone on this base."

"I know you wouldn't, Sarah," Tony says. "I believe you. I really do. But you need to stop talking now. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

"You're reading me my rights?"

"Actually, I'm reciting them, because after all these years I know them by heart. You have the right to an attorney. If you can't afford one an attorney will be provided. Agent Burns, please contact Judge Almeira. And get that damned frame out of my office. Agent Allen, please take Agent Cosgrove into custody and escort her to the brig."

"Seriously, Tony?" Tawan asks. "We're arresting Sarah?"

"I'm afraid so, Tawan. Now get moving. All of you."


	24. Chapter 24 Gambling in Casablanca

24 There is gambling in Casablanca

And then it's just them, Gibbs's old MCRT. "Wow," Abby says. "I did not see that coming."

"_I_ should have seen it coming," Tony says. "She didn't bring him for Labor Day. And she never mentioned a name."

"And from that you should have known she was dating a man that could do this?" Ziva asks.

McGee says, "Tony, are you sure she's innocent? He had to have gotten the email address from her and he's at her apartment."

"I'm sure," Tony says. "I knew she was the type that—I knew. I didn't do enough to protect her. I knew."

"She's an adult and a federal agent," Gibbs says. "We don't have time for this. We still have a bad guy on base."

"And we are down one more agent—three if Win and Mark have to wait on a warrant," Ziva says.

"We don't know that we just have one bad guy, either," McGee says. "Blond guy stabbed Tony and took the car. Hamilton probably brought Rebecca back. But there could be more."

"Oh, there are more," Gibbs says. "This was a long time cooking. That frame was planted in July."

"But we didn't even have Hassan in July," Tony says.

"They were just fishing, knowing that Rota's used as a transfer point. Hassan was the first fish they hooked. But I think there's probably just one on base. One sharpshooter is all that's needed. Or one suicide bomber."

"I don't think he's a suicide bomber," Tony says. "I think he's a pro hired out for this job. But we should use the bomb sniffing dogs anyway."

"How many dogs do you have on base?"

"Four explosive, two drug, two scent, 10 K9."

"I bet it's noisy during full moons."

"Like a werewolf movie."

Abby says, "We have the perp's jacket, Gibbs. It's contaminated with Tony's blood, but if we just give the scent dogs a corner it might work."

"Your conversation with Vance," Gibbs asks. "Was it specific as to the method?"

"Yes. They're keeping two bodies on ice on the Reagan. Two were going in one body bag, Hassan in the other. Landing at dock 3. From there straight to the cargo plane."

"How would even a sniper know which body bag to shoot?"

"It would be the smaller one, McGoo."

"Or shoot both bags," Ziva says.

"One or two shots at the most," Gibbs says. "Then all hell would break lose."

"I think suicide bomber," Abby says. "If it's a pro sniper, how does he get away?"

"He puts on the NCIS jacket and hat and runs to the main gate and says…something."

Gibbs sighs. "Okay, here's what we do. We get on the blower and get every available MP off the Reagan and on base."

"What about the other NCIS agents?" McGee asks. "Shouldn't we try and get them, too?"

"They're scattered throughout the fleet. It would take too long to gather them up," Gibbs says. "We start sniffing with the bomb dogs and the scent dogs. In the meantime, Chad stuffs two body bags full of something, one obviously overstuffed. And we bring those to dock 3. Either we flush the guy out through the search or at dock 3."

"Pretty dangerous for Dunham and the people on the dock."

"You got a better idea, DiNozzo? We'll be the guys on the dock and we'll wear vests. I don't see alternatives."

"We can at least focus the search. There's a limited area that would provide clear sight lines on the dock and the route to the airstrip. We can also have a helo up to check rooftops."

"A helo will attract a lot of attention, and I thought that's what you didn't want."

"We don't have terrorist on base or an Iranian nuke guy on the Reagan," Tony says. "We have a kidnapping suspect on base. That's the story if anyone asks."

"Okay," Gibbs says. "Ducky, you and Rebecca stay here with Tony. The MPs stay at the door. Abby, you'll monitor communications from the office. We're going to need MPs there as well. Everybody else is in MP gear. We'll get the scent dogs and the explosive dogs out, and every available K9 unit as well. I'd better get up with the MP CO. Everybody else, back to the office and get wired."

"Abby," Tony says. "I'm going to need a comm. link here as well. NCIS and MP channels."

"You can't do that," Ducky says. "This is an ICU unit. That gear will interfere with the monitors."

"I'm the only patient as far as I can see, and you can monitor me instead."

"This is a _terrible_ idea, Anthony. And a dangerous one." Ducky says.

"It sure is," Gibbs says. "You think you're going to run my investigation from a hospital bed?"

"It's not just your investigation. It's my base. It's what I'm supposed to do."

"This is not a pissing contest."

"No, it's not, it's my job. Abby, if you don't want to be responsible for giving me the comm. link, I'll get Agent Allen to do it. Otherwise, Special Agent Gibbs, I'll make it clear to my agents that you're in charge of the joint tactical operations with the MPs. Clear enough?"

"Jesus," Gibbs says. "What are you all standing there for? Go."

Ziva comes and sits on the bed. "Tony, what are you doing?"

"Great," he says. "Even you don't trust me to not screw this up."

"It is not a question of trust. Any other day but this."

"You're going out. You're doing your job."

"Is that what this is about? Tony, you can't keep me safe this way."

"No, I can't. I can't protect my office. I can't protect the most important operation Vance ever trusted me with. I can't even get my daughter to school on time. I can at least pretend to do what I'm supposed to do."

"Oh, Tony." She does not kiss him, but she puts her cheek against his for a long moment. "I will be back soon."

"Be careful." But he does not try to pull her closer.

Outside, Gibbs takes Ziva aside. "Perhaps you should stay with your husband, Ziva."

"We are too short-handed as it is."

"We need to take this guy alive if we can. I know you've been through hell. But I need to know that you'll follow orders today."

"Gibbs. You of all people must understand."

"What I understand is that your husband is in no shape to be involved in this and he's involved for the wrong reasons. I don't want to worry about you, too."

"You won't need to worry about me," she says quietly.


	25. Chapter 25 Mercury?  Still retrograde

25 Mercury? Still retrograde

When she's gone, Ducky says, "Anthony. Perhaps it would be better if Ziva just doesn't go."

Tony shakes his head. "She's so good and so capable. And she misses out because she's my wife and I'm her boss. Everything that's happened happened to her—more than me, because I missed most of it. If I keep her in the office today it'll just be another thing she won't ever be able to forgive me for."

"She doesn't blame you for what happened yesterday."

"Yet. Everyone's running on endorphins and adrenaline and caffeine. Once you give a person a reason to look at you differently, there's no telling where it ends."

"Anthony, that's not what happened back in DC."

"I blew my undercover assignment. I blew my protection detail. Those were pretty big reasons."

"You didn't blow either. You made a mistake in trusting Jenny Shepard. And if anyone started looking at you differently, it was you yourself."

"I've blown this every way possible. I let my agents down, I let Vance down, and I let my wife and daughter get put through hell. I should be divorced _and_ fired."

"I shouldn't expect you to have any perspective this soon. But you've lost sight of the most important thing, Anthony. You've all survived."

"Day before yesterday we weren't just surviving. But cheer up, Ducky. It _is_ my base. I might actually be useful. Becks, give me the iPad."

"I'm on level 12."

"Really? 12? Put it on pause, you can have it right back. I have to do some work."

Abby is back a few minutes later with the comm. gear. "I understand why you're doing this, Tony. And I'm saying prayers for all of us. In many languages."

"Thanks, Abby, but could you leave out the voodoo ones? They freak Ziva out."

"Tony." Abby hesitates. "I know where Ziva was yesterday. She didn't have a dentist appointment."

"I know too. She's a terrible liar. But I guess that's a good thing."

Abby waits, as if expecting more. Then she says, "I love you _all_. I don't understand why things get so difficult. I know Mercury's in retrograde, but things shouldn't be like this. It should _never_ have been like this."

"I have no idea what that Mercury thing means. Do I want to know?"

"Communication difficulties. I understand why you left. I love you and I love Ziva and I love Becks and I love that you're happy here. But I love Gibbs, too. I just don't understand why we all stopped being family."

"We haven't stopped, Abby."

"But not all of us, Tony. Not any more. That shouldn't have happened."

"I just couldn't figure out how to do it better. Can I blame Mercury?"

"Don't tease, Tony. I'm serious."

"So am I, Abby. You and Ducky are old souls. I'm on my on first go-round. And making a mess of it. You're Meryl Streep, I'm Albert Brooks."

"I _hate_ it when things change," Abby says. "I miss you, Tony."

"I miss you too, Abby."

"I'm going to give you a real hug now, okay? Let me know if it hurts."

"Only if you promise to hang around. I'm doing Painkiller Tony tomorrow."

"My third favorite Tony! But you know I love them all." They have been as playful as puppies with each other for sixteen years, and neither can remember being angry with the other for a full day. She gives him her best hug.

But he grunts a little. "Tony, you were supposed to say if it hurts."

"No, Abby, that's not it." He picks up the iPad. "That's the guy that took the car. Sergei Guyadev."


	26. Chapter 26 Tony DiNozzo approves

26 Tony DiNozzo approves this arrest

At 1200 the additional MPs from the Reagan come ashore, and Gibbs parcels them out around the base, seeding his few NCIS agents as carefully as possible. He walks back and forth to the dock, his sniper's eye raking over the grounds, asking himself what vantage he'd choose. The search teams now have a definite face to watch for, but the searches of the area near the docks are fruitless. The explosive-sniffing dogs find nothing.

At 1300 Gibbs waves off the helo. It's just making noise and the comm. channels are overloaded as it is without everyone shouting at the top of their lungs. He orders out the scent dogs, though he knows it's a longshot because the perp's jacket is contaminated. The dogs lead their teams on a chase from the parking lot to the NCIS office to the commissary to the basketball court to the MP office and back. Allen has the idea to ask Tony—who, Gibbs is relieved to note, has been silent until now—if he's been down to the docks recently. No, not since Friday, and it had rained on Saturday and Tuesday afternoon. Good idea, Gibbs says, and the scent dogs are taken down to the dock 3 ramp. They amble for a bit and then pick up a scent and go trotting off, with Gibbs and Burns and Allen in pursuit. But the search ends at a trashcan, which holds Tony's missing jacket and cap.

"Hey, Tony," Allen says, "you won't have to break in a new one."

"I'm thinking this one was too big for the perp," Burns says.

"Hey," Tony says. "Today you found my kid, my car, and my favorite cap. You find my three-point shot and it's bonuses for everyone."

"It's official," Burns says. "You're the strongest-smelling man on base, Tony."

"Is comedy hour over?" Gibbs asks. "We've still got nothing. We'll have to go ahead and try and flush him out." He tells Abby to send the go signal to Chad from Chad and takes Burns, Green, Allen, and McGee down to the docks; Ziva, Hancock, and their detachment of MPs are sent back up to the base, ready to move if shooting breaks out.

Allen asks Gibbs, "Are we wrong about this? Maybe there's no one on base. Maybe Hamilton just wanted to get Tony."

"Doesn't explain the bug," Gibbs says. "The bastard's here. He's just waiting."

Tony has been biting his lip through most of the afternoon, half-listening to Becks as she alternates between Ducky's lap and his bed, talking about her Tetris game and Abby and Caf-Pow and her new knife and telling a complicated story about Bunny. He struggles to follow the action and tries not to listen too hard for any mention of Ziva. He knows he's worse than used up, and his tired mind fixates on the cap, not the dock. "I wonder why he ditched them."

"Perhaps he realizes everyone's in MP gear," Ducky says.

"But how? We could just be sitting in the office waiting for the go signal." Couldn't know that they're in MP gear; they hadn't discussed that until this morning, there certainly can't be another bug in this hospital room, and McGee's disabled the one in his office. Why take the cap and jacket and then ditch them? Why does the cap matter? At this point, Tony thinks, I'd have been headslapped at least twice. Give it up already. Is this guy smart enough to know the car would be found and we'd be looking for a guy in an NCIS cap? When he has no intention of using it?

The launch has left the Reagan and will be at dock 3 in 5. Tony knows he should stay out of this, but he asks Abby, "Is there anything in this Guyadev's file about him being a sharpshooter?"

"Interpol has him as a close-up wetwork guy. But he's Russian, so we could be missing a lot. They don't share much information with Interpol, especially about their home-grown bad guys. I have no way of confirming whether the guy did any army service."

Russian. Russian? "Abby, is he Russian Russian or Chechen Russian?"

"He's from some place called Bamut…Chechnya."

"Boss," Tony says.

"Yeah, Tony, I heard," Gibbs says. "I don't think he's going to try anything on the dock."

"If he had a backpack, could he carry something big enough to take down a cargo plane?"

"If the pack's big enough he could have a Stinger. But the best shot with a Stinger would be after the plane's in the air, and he doesn't need to be on base for that. How many cargos are on the tarmac now?"

"Six, counting the refrigerator…no, seven. We were supposed to have seven in today, and they're all on tight turnarounds, dump and jump."

"That's a lot of gas trucks. For a gas truck he'd only need an RPG."

Yes, that's a lot of gas trucks, and it's a hell of a lot easier to hit a gas truck—or four or five of them—than to hit a cargo plane hard enough to bring it down. "My God," Tony says, "he won't have to find Hassan. He hits enough gas trucks and we could lose half the base."

"Where would he go?"

"Uh…"

"Tony, damn it, focus. It's your base. Where would he go?"

"There's…there's a lot of ground cover there. North and east of the main hangar. He could see the road from the docks from that angle and have a short shot at the trucks."

Gibbs: "Burns, you drive the truck. You drive slow, and you stop as soon as you can see that corner. You pop the hood like you've got trouble. I want this guy to think that there's just a hitch in the delivery. Everybody else, with me."

A few minutes later the link goes quiet. Tony imagines them bunched around Gibbs, getting silent instructions. Becks, too, goes quiet. She looks at him, puzzled. "Don't worry, Becks," he says to her. "Everything's okay."

"Tony," Ducky says, "should we get her off base? If you're right…"

"Everything's okay," he says again. "They'll take care of it." He thinks: I should have reminded Gibbs that Win's a great shot, but since when does Gibbs need a sharpshooter? Bill was the right one for the acting job….

And there's a single shot, so loud that even Becks jumps. Please, God, Tony thinks, no more. No more. But there are a few more quick pops, and then Gibbs: "Drop your weapon! Drop it! Step back. Allen, cuff him. Green, make sure that RPG's not hot. Good shot, Hancock. Sitrep, David?"

"No one else out here. He must have been alone, Gibbs."

Allen says, "Sergei Guyadev, you're under arrest for attempted murder, kidnapping, extortion, theft, and trying to barbecue without a license."

"What'd he say?" asks Green.

"He says we're violating his rights under the EU Human Rights Treaty."

"My God, he's a lawyer. Shoot him again, Win."

"Now what's he saying?"

"He says he's injured and needs medical attention."

"It's just a flesh wound."

There is a bit more of this, ending with a remark about settling all the DiNozzo family business today. Allen says, "Godfather reference?"

"Check. Monty Python reference?"

"Check. Noseless bastard?"

"Check. It's official. Tony DiNozzo would approve this arrest."

"Jesus," is all Gibbs can manage. "Hancock, take the canno—don't forget the RPG."

By 1430 it is all over. By 1500 Hassan, who had been brought ashore at 1200 in uniform with the Reagan MPs, is on a plane with Chad and another NCIS minder. And by 1530, launches start landing sailors for their Rota liberty. Except for the additional MPs and the throngs of high-spirited young men and women, it looks like an ordinary afternoon at Rota Naval Station. The next day local papers report that the man who had carjacked an American agent had been caught on base. There is no mention of a second man or a thwarted terror attack. And the story quickly fades away. For Leon Vance, it is a two-toothpick day.


	27. Chapter 27 What Ziva needs

27 What Ziva needs

Ducky turns off the comm. equipment and hooks up the monitors again, and turns the morphine drip as high as he dare. Not too long after, Tony is treated to the sight of a blond man with blood and snot on his lower face being frog-marched to the ER to get the end of his nose stitched up. Gibbs walks past, too, but all he gives is a quick jerk of his chin.

And finally Ziva. She hugs Becks and then faces Tony. Her eyes are dark and unreadable, so he reaches for the wrong weapon. "Love the uniform. Will they let you keep it?"

"Tony, don't joke." She takes his face between her hands, his poor tired face with the scraped cheek, so that he can't turn away. Why does he make it so difficult? He knows all her secrets but tries to hide his own. She needs to see that her Tony is still in there, the Tony that lives behind the clothes and the fancy watch, the athlete's swagger and the deflecting humor. She loves all the outer trappings of Tony, but it was the hope of seeing the rest that had drawn her to Rota, and seeing it is what keeps her there. That Tony, she sees, is badly shaken but still there. What follows isn't movie-love kisses, she doesn't need kisses. She puts her arms around him and hugs him as hard as she can, harder than Abby ever hugged. She doesn't care if it hurts, she needs this. And he must not care either, for his arms are just as tight.

But then the morphine does kick in, and he's soon out cold. "You should go home and get some sleep, my dear," Ducky says.

She shakes her head. "I'm going to take Rebecca home and give her a bath. But we're coming back. Gibbs is interrogating Hamilton tonight. I want—I need to watch. I need to know why this happened. But you should come home with me, Ducky. You've done so much for us already. You must be exhausted."

"Another night will hardly matter. I daresay Tony will be fine, but he's done much too much today. I should be more comfortable if I say."

She smiles. "The ICU people must hate us, there are so many of us and we never leave."

"They're used to it. But perhaps tonight we could get a cot or two. You might actually sleep."

"I can't remember what sleep is," she says.

Rebecca is tired and cross and sobs in the tub, not wanting her hair washed. Ziva can't bear to let it go undone any longer. She is ashamed that she's been too caught up to get her daughter fresh clothes, that Becks has been sitting around all this time in the same white dress she'd put on for school the terrible, terrible day before. She wants everything about these two days scrubbed off. Ziva thinks: I will give all of this to Abby and it will disappear into an evidence locker forever. Our house will not be contaminated by anything they touched. I will get her a new backpack and a new tiara, and all of this will be gone. Please may it be that easy.

She herself is filthy, but she doesn't want to miss the interrogation. Instead, while Becks chooses pajamas, she goes into her bathroom and picks up the fallen towel. It smells just as she'd thought it would. It's almost as good as a shower.


	28. Chapter 28 I hope that burns

A/N: Sorry, this is a very long chapter. But it's Gibbs in interrogation and I couldn't figure out how to cut it. Hope you make it to the end!

28 I hope that burns

Gibbs is outside interrogation, looking over his notes. "You sure you want to watch, Ziva?"

"I need to hear it for myself."

"Okay."

"No lectures about my personal revenge mission?"

"You did fine today. No lecture." He touches her shoulder, and then goes in.

Poor Mark Green and Win Hancock have been given the job of babysitting the office. Allen and Burns are already in observation. "We figured this would be an educational experience," Burns says.

"It will be."

Tony hadn't hired Hamilton, but he'd agreed to take him because he speaks fluent Spanish. He had never liked him, though Ziva has never understood exactly what Tony disliked so much. His gut told him, she thinks now.

"Peter," Gibbs says quietly. "Is it Peter, or Pete?"

"Peter."

"Peter. I'm Special Agent Gibbs, from Washington. I was brought in to straighten out this mess. And it has been a mess. You want some coffee? Because I know I sure need it."

Peter frowns, but then nods, and Gibbs leaves and comes back with two paper cups. He sits down again. "Here's the important thing," Gibbs says. "Somebody cared an awful lot about seeing that this little girl got home safely. I've worked quite a few abductions, and I never saw a child returned like that, without even a scratch. That's going to count for a lot."

Peter doesn't have anything to say.

"The more I look at this," Gibbs says, "it almost looks like a prank to me. A prank that someone thought up, not to hurt anyone, and someone else got involved and made it a whole lot worse. But I keep coming back to that little girl, and that's why I think this started as a prank."

Behind the glass, Allen says, "Going for the out. I'd rather shoot his nose off, but I guess it's a good choice."

"Yeah," Burns says. "He'll fall for it. He thinks he's smart enough to talk his way out of this."

Back in interrogation, Gibbs changes tack. "So tell me why DiNozzo fired you."

"He just didn't like me."

"Why?"

"I'm not like him. I'm not some frat boy jock. I'm an intellectual."

Gibbs smiles. "There's a lot of that in law enforcement. Guys who never get over being jocks in high school or college. I bet you heard that story about the Wisconsin game a dozen times. I know I heard it about a thousand."

"You know him?"

"I was his boss for ten years. Believe me, that was a full-time job. Did he tell you how he'd have gone pro if Brad Pitt hadn't broken his leg?"

Peter rolls his eyes. "As if Brad Pitt had played football."

"Well, you know, once a quarterback, always a quarterback. DiNozzo's the type that has to run everything. Hey, I see you guys have a basketball court. You all ever play some pickup?"

"A little."

"He was a ball hog when I knew him."

"Still is. You should see Tawan and the other guys sucking up to him on the court. They're all the same, all frat boy jocks."

Burns says, "My college sport was bridge."

"Bet you looked great in the uniform," Allen says.

"Too many pleats in the skirt. Made my ass look big."

Gibbs: "So you weren't as impressed with DiNozzo as the others. Why did you want to go into law enforcement, Peter?"

"I'm a cum laude graduate in anthropology. My studies have given me unique insight into human motivations. I think policing could be made much more thoughtful and effective through the application of cultural insights."

"Oh, God," Burns says. "Here comes his honors paper _again_."

"Interesting. So how did your methods work?" Gibbs asks.

"I wasn't given an opportunity to implement them."

"No, I guess not. DiNozzo's old-fashioned, like you said. That's why he's here and not back in DC. You ever meet Director Vance?"

"No."

"Very cutting-edge. I'm sure he'd have found your ideas interesting. He wasn't happy that you were let go."

Peter frowns. "But he didn't stop it."

"Regulations. Not much that can be done when a supervising agent, even a bad one, fires a probationary agent."

Behind the glass, Allen says, "I get the technique, but I think he's going a little too far."

"It's not personal, it's business," Burns says. "Building a false sense of trust. So much more fun when it breaks."

Ziva stiffens. She understands the technique better than either of these two. She has seen Gibbs do it many times, Tony as well; she has used it herself. But she knows that Tony had left DC believing this is Gibbs's real opinion, and she's glad that he's not here.

"Okay, that helps me understand a lot better, Peter. So how did you hear about the carjackings down here?"

"From Sarah," Peter says.

Allen: "Ooh, smarty pants took his first wrong step."

"Pretty simple crime. Shouldn't be that hard to solve. But they weren't having much luck solving them, were they?"

"Not from what I heard."

"So carjacking the special agent in charge would be pretty funny, wouldn't it?"

"I didn't carjack anyone."

"No, but you know who did. Here's the thing, Peter: like I said, I think this is a prank gone wrong. But your fingerprint is on the little girl's backpack. That's bad for you."

"I might have touched it in the office."

"She just got the backpack when she started school. You haven't seen her since then, unless you've been hanging around her school."

"Of course not. I'm not a pervert."

"So your fingerprint's on her backpack. You're tied to this crime, Peter. Another agent might be content to just pin this whole thing on you. But I don't think you're the bad guy here, Peter. Are you?"

"No," Peter says.

"So," Gibbs says. "You thought you'd teach DiNozzo a little lesson, carjack him, and then see him run around with his pants on fire, not even able to find his own car. Sounds like a pretty good joke to me."

"I told you, I didn't carjack anyone."

"I know you didn't, but there's a really bad guy out there, Peter. Help me find him and all anyone will remember about you is that little girl got home safe. You'll just be the guy who did the right thing even though he'd been treated like crap."

Peter hesitates. "His name is Sergio Garcia."

"Sergio Garcia. Spanish?"

"From Barcelona."

"How'd you meet him?"

"We were temping together." Peter tells a story of striking up a friendship, sharing bad boss stories. He'd mentioned the carjackings one day, as Sarah had just mentioned it. Sergio had had the idea that it would be funny to carjack DiNozzo. Just as a joke, he said, to show him up. Sergio even offered to do the carjacking. He'd steal the car, ditch it in the woods somewhere, and then they'd watch NCIS run in circles.

"So what went wrong?" Gibbs asks.

"The girl was still in the car. Sergio said it had just gone bad, and he'd panicked. I wanted to send her back right away, but Sergio said I was implicated."

"What about the ransom?"

"Sergio never meant to collect it. It was just to distract everyone so I could get an opportunity to take her back."

"Okay. So this Sergio Garcia. Ever meet any of his friends? Family? Roommates, anything like that?"

"No, just Sergio."

"Okay, Peter, this is very helpful. I've been writing this down. I want you to look it over and sign it if it seems right to you."

Peter looks it over and signs.

"That's great. But I think there are still a few problems, Peter."

"I told you everything I know."

"But you must have known this Sergio's not Spanish. Tony heard him speak one sentence and marked him as Russian. Any idea where this Sergio is now?"

"No idea. He said he was going back to Seville last night."

"Does he have a car?"

"No, I drove us down from Seville."

"How did he get back to Seville?"

Peter swallows. "I don't know."

"It's a long cab ride."

"I told you, I don't know."

"Okay. He left last night—when? Around midnight?"

"Midnight, I guess."

"Why did you wait so long to bring the little girl back?"

"We—we decided to wait, until things had died down."

"Did Sergio think it was funny, to let a woman stand in a field, waiting for the return of her child? Did he think it was funny to let her go through the night believing her five-year-old child was dead? Did _you_ think it was funny, Peter?"

"Of course not. Like you said, I did everything I could to protect Rebecca. We were just so flustered about the carjacking going wrong. I—I didn't think about Ziva."

"You didn't think she'd already be worried enough about her husband?"

"I didn't know about the stabbing. Sergio didn't tell me."

"You didn't know? It was all over the news about an American agent being stabbed. Did you think _two_ American agents were carjacked in Rota yesterday?"

"I never watched the news yesterday. Or today."

Gibbs frowns. "But wasn't that the point? To carjack Tony and make him and his office look like fools? Why weren't you watching?"

"I was worried."

"Okay. The ransom. Who sent the email?"

"Sergio."

"Where did he get Ziva's email address?"

"I don't know. The addresses here aren't that hard to figure out."

"Okay, Peter, that's been very helpful. I've just made a few additions to your original statement. If you're okay with them, initial them, and we can just about call this a night."

Peter initials. Ziva can see a fleeting smile cross his face. Not yet, she thinks.

"There's one thing that really bothers me, Peter," Gibbs says. "You haven't asked about Sarah."

"Why would I?"

"She's your girlfriend, isn't she?"

"Yes, of course."

"How long?"

"Since May."

"You weren't dating when you worked here?"

"No. Why would I ask you about Sarah?"

"Her relationship with you is going to cost her her career."

"But why?"

Gibbs sighs. "No one will ever believe she wasn't involved. It's one thing for you to play a prank. It's another for her to conspire to help, or to not report it. And when the carjacking did go bad, she didn't report it."

"She didn't know anything about the carjacking. She couldn't report it."

"Okay, well, go ahead and add that to your statement."

Peter adds. Gibbs looks it over. "This is great, Peter. Just one more thing and then I think we're done." He pulls out Guyadev's mugshot. "Tony says this is the guy that carjacked him. Is this Sergio Garcia?"

Peter looks at the photograph, trying to decide how to answer. Finally, he says, "It looks like him."

"Okay, that's very helpful. We're done here. You know why? Because this statement is all the proof I need that you're a lousy liar and guilty as hell."

"It's true."

"It's crap. You've left out the most important part. The digital frame."

"What frame?"

"The frame you gave to Sarah. The frame that you loaded with pictures from Ziva's photography account. The frame that you got from Sergio Garcia—or Sergei Guyadev, as it turns out."

"I—if there's something wrong with that frame I didn't know about it."

"No one's going to believe that, Peter. You helped plant it and then you conspired with Sergei to act on intel you gathered from that bug. Ask yourself, Peter: how do I know?"

"You can't know that."

"Sergei Guyadev tried to execute an attack on this base today. He failed. He's in custody right now. I'll let you guess how much he's already told me."

Peter is very pale and still. "So you're being charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, extortion, and conspiracy to commit crimes of mass destruction. You got used by a pro, Peter. Old Sergei'll have something worth trading. You? You're nothing. You'll be lucky to get life with no parole."

"I'm not a terrorist!"

"No, you're a nasty little perv who wanted to get back at a boss who didn't buy your act. You were willing to kill a man and terrify his wife and child. You were willing to risk the lives of every soldier, sailor, and dependent on this base. And you know what, Peter? That boss you think is so old-fashioned, so much dumber than you? He figured this out from an ICU room. At your best, with the help of a Chechen pro, you're still no match for a half-dead Tony DiNozzo. I hope that burns."


	29. Chapter 29 When to wake up Leon Vance

29 When to wake up Leon Vance

Ziva meets Gibbs outside interrogation. "Do you really think he cared about Rebecca?"

"No. He didn't think he'd get caught, but he was smart enough to know harming Rebecca would doom him if he did get caught."

"But why, Gibbs? I don't understand any more than I did before."

"If you want whys, ask Ducky. Ziva, he wanted Tony dead. Don't waste another second of your life wondering about him."

"I'll try not to. Gibbs…thank you. For what you said at the end."

He kisses Ziva on the cheek. "You're on leave until further notice. Go take care of your family. We'll clean up here."

When Ziva's gone, Allen asks, "Is that it?"

Gibbs says, "That's it for Hamilton. He didn't know about the transfers when he was in the office. He's just a tool. I'd be amazed if he was ever in contact with the people who hired Guyadev."

"You think Guyadev will talk?" Burns asks doubtfully.

"Maybe. Why don't you two take a crack at it?" Gibbs says.

Allen goes in alone. The exam is dreary and unproductive. Guyadev first claims his Spanish identity, then doesn't blink when Allen id's him as Guyadev; Guyadev then asks to be turned over to Spanish authorities and doesn't blink when Allen shows him a document from the Spanish government, ceding jurisdiction; asks for a lawyer, doesn't blink when he's informed that he's being held as an enemy combatant and has no right to a lawyer anyway. Guyadev listens to the rundown of evidence against him with no apparent concern.

Burns sticks his head in. "Wrap it up, man."

"But I'm just getting started."

"We got the word from Washington to shut it down."

"Why?"

"We're shipping him to Russia. Director doesn't think we can get anything from him that will equal what the Russians will give us for him."

"What's this mook done?"

"They say he had something to do with that airliner that got shot down three years ago. The one that was carrying the premier's personal judo sparring partner."

Allen whistles. "Ouch. So what do we get for the noseless bastard?"

"Above my paygrade, friend. But you know the SVR's got a cabinet full of goodies, and the Director's just got himself a platinum card of favors."

Allen closes his folder. "You poor guy. Win shooting off your nose is going to turn out to be the highlight of this job."

"My guess is they'll skin this guy and use the pelt as a punching bag. But it's not my problem. I just gotta get the paperwork done and get this guy on a plane this morning."

"Wait," Guyadev says. "You cannot do this."

"Sure I can. Enemy combatant, blah blah blah. Don't mention the EU Human Rights Treaty. You're not an EU citizen and you're not on EU territory."

"I can help you."

Burns shakes his head. "My guess is you're a long ways down the food chain. I'm not waking Leon Vance up for you."

"I didn't shoot down that plane."

"Nobody here cares whether you shot down that plane. All I know is who ordered me to put you on _this_ plane. He's not a man that likes to be questioned. If I'm going to wake him up and ask him to change his plans it's going to have to be for something really good. I don't want to be reassigned to Alaska."

"Like Super Bowl tickets good," Allen suggests.

"Much better than that."

"Like skybox Super Bowl tickets good."

"Nice, but it's gonna have to be better than that, I think. This is Director Vance we're talking about."

"Like skybox Super Bowl tickets, a crate full of Cuban cigars…"

"Closer."

"…and a smokin' hot Porsche driven by Miss December."

"Yeah, that might do it."

"I'll tell you everything if you don't send me back to Russia," Guyadev says.

"That might just hit the Miss Porsche button. Start writing, Tolstoy. And Allen, you go call Vance."

"You're the senior field agent. _You_ call Vance."

"As the senior field agent I'm delegating the task to you."

"I don't want to get sent to Alaska either."

"Well, maybe we should wait and see what the noseless bastard gives us before we wake up Leon Vance. You'd better write faster, Tolstoy. You're supposed to be wheels up at 0800."

Outside interrogation, Gibbs says, "I don't suppose Guyadev realizes that it's only 1800 in Washington. Even Leon Vance doesn't go to bed that early."

"We turned the clock in the interrogation room forward," Allen says.

Burns says, "There's this great scene in Gettysburg where Buford says, Let's go wake up Harry Heth. With cavalry, not an alarm clock. I just wanted to use that."

"It's Win's favorite movie," Allen adds. "The first Superb's in it. He brings it in on every major American holiday."

"Tony hates Civil War stuff, but he lets him play it because he loves that fix bayonet scene."

"Hey, even I love that scene."

Gibbs asks, "And the Russians?"

Burns shrugs. "Eh, we didn't want to wake them up, either. Hey, is it still the SVR, or have they changed acronyms again?"

Comedy gold. Gibbs says, "We'll have to start running down whatever he gives us right away. The birds have probably already flown the coop, but we might get lucky."

"We're not going home tonight, either, are we?"

"No."

"I guess someone had better make some coffee." Burns sighs. "I love Tony like I love my loafers, but what he knows about coffee could be written on half a post-it note."

"I'll send you some real coffee," Gibbs says. "That's good work. Go see what Tolstoy's got for us."

The birds have flown the coop, but there's a single print from a right index finger on a hotel alarm clock snooze button. Four weeks later, that same finger will deplane at Dulles, and Gibbs will have a fresh file on his desk.


	30. Chapter 30 Everyone stays at Rick's

30 Everyone stays at Rick's

But Gibbs doesn't go back to Washington just yet. There's a tremendous amount of paperwork still to be done, the carrier group is still in Rota on liberty, the SAIC is enjoying the Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds phase of his recovery, and the office is now woefully understaffed. Gibbs moves into BOC and takes over the desk of one of the detailed agents, tactful enough to leave Tony's office alone. Though he does help himself to the clean shirts and socks. Not the first time he's done that.

Abby stays because the tech is still unreachable in Patagonia, and because with everyone else staying she would be lonely in Washington, and because Painkiller Tony is, after all, her third favorite Tony. She's said before that Undercover Dirtball Tony is her second favorite Tony, which leaves McGee wondering which Tony holds the number one spot.

To Ducky he asks: "You don't think those two ever…"

Ducky sighs. "I don't think so, but have you ever heard Abby talk about the dreams involving her and Tony at the zoo? Ah, then don't ask. Some things once heard cannot be unheard."

Also, Abby has a new best friend in Becks. She shows Becks that there are games other than Tetris, introduces her to really loud music, finds a chain for the little pink Swiss army knife, and covers her in temporary tattoos. "I want one just like her," she says to McGee. "I mean, _just_ like her."

"I don't think human cloning is viable yet," McGee says. "You'll have to consider more traditional means of reproduction."

And so McGee stays too, and they both wedge themselves into the small fourth bedroom, though they're quiet about it.

Ducky stays because he's got more vacation time than he will ever use, and he sees that he's still needed. Not by Tony; the first few days after all the excitement are bad ones for Tony, morphine or not, but after that he turns a corner, and Ducky stops worrying about the competency of the base hospital. After a few more days of Tony's verbal improvisations, and the growing irritation of the hospital staff, even Ducky realizes it's time to turn down the morphine drip.

Ducky stays because he sees his girls need him until Tony comes home. Becks is cheerful all day, going back and forth between the office and the hospital, her eyes shining and every other sentence beginning with "Abby says…" But she sobs when it's time to leave Babbo at the hospital, and she's desolate at bedtime. It takes two or three full Ducky stories to get her to sleep. Even the added warmth and distraction of having Abby and McGee in the house can't console her.

Nor do they console Ziva. Ducky notices that Ziva can't bring herself to sleep in her own bed. The first few nights she sleeps in Becks's bed; another night on the floor in Becks's room, and then on the couch upstairs. On the day that Tony is to be released and the rest of her houseguests to return to Washington, Ducky finds her at dawn in a chair on the terrace. He takes her a cup of tea.

"It is silly," she says. "But nothing feels familiar. I do not feel at home now. And I am afraid that I never will."

"There has been nothing normal or familiar about these days, my dear. You must give it time. These things don't disappear, but they get smaller with time. Manageable."

"I'm so worried," she whispers.

"Don't be. Rebecca will be fine. She's young and she's loved. But you're not worried about Rebecca, are you? Or yourself."

"He jokes," she says. "He says nothing serious. Do not say it is the painkillers, Ducky. You have seen him like this before. You saw what happened to him after Jenny died. What was going on underneath the silliness."

"Yes, but he righted himself eventually."

"But it took years, and it was—hard to watch. We do not have years. I could not bear for Rebecca to see him so lost."

"Which is why it won't happen that way. Ziva, Anthony's troubles were never just about Jenny Shepard. He is where he ought to be now, and he knows that. He will get over this far more slowly than you or Rebecca. But he will. And cheer up, my dear. When the times comes, you'll know what to do. Any woman who can get Tony DiNozzo to drive a Smart Car does not lack for resources."

That makes her smile. "Thank you, Ducky. For everything. We could not manage without you."

"And I thank you, Ziva. Jethro accused me of becoming a romantic the other day."

"I think you have always been a romantic."

"Perhaps, but in my day one was taught to resist the impulse. We always think of bad acts having great consequences. But at my age you realize that good ones do, too. The happiness of one person can add to the happiness of another, with no loss." He smiles. "If nothing else, I believe your situation has persuaded Abigail to reconsider her romantic life, which will make Timothy very happy indeed."

The mention of Gibbs makes Ziva more solemn. "I do not know how Gibbs survived."

"I don't know either, and this romantic old man is very glad that you won't have to find out for yourself. Now I should go wake Abby and Timothy. We mustn't miss our flight. Oh, and remember that nail polish remover is far more effective on the temporary tattoos than soap. There's bound to be a bottle in Tony's desk. It's good on the superglue as well."


	31. Chapter 31 The everydayness of love

31 The everydayness of love

Everyone is glad to see Tony DiNozzo head home. The hospital staff is relieved: he has been too loud, too disobedient, and had too many visitors after visiting hours that have also been loud and disobedient. But no one is happier than Rebecca DiNozzo, who is tired of hospital food and has a new tiara to match her new knife. She races up the three flights of stairs, anxious to trade her sneakers for her pink heels.

Ziva wants to put Tony to bed right away. "Right away, woman? Even I'm not ready for that." He wants to sit on the terrace and enjoy the flat, hazy view. She thinks he is too pale and needs the color back in his face, so she helps him up the extra flight. They have a pleasant morning on the terrace. Becks shows off her new iPad (a gift from Abby) and her little mermaid tattoos (also a gift from Abby). "Should we take the knife away?" Tony asks.

"It makes her feel better. She will have to give it up when she goes back to school. But by then I think she will be more comfortable giving it up."

"When does she go back to school? Or does she? It's just kindergarten."

"She goes back to school when we go back to work. She needs it. She has had too much attention as it is."

Not meeting her eyes, Tony asks, "Will you let me take her to school?"

"Of course. I think if we compromise on the matter of breakfast food we will take care of the timeliness problem."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know that's not what you meant. Wait until after she goes down for a nap."

"She didn't nap much this week."

"Abby is gone and so is the Caf-Pow. She will smurf out."

"Turf out. You should watch more football."

"It is too violent."

"Says the woman who always goes straight for the gonads."

But after lunch Becks does turf out on the sofa. Ziva, like Ducky, thinks tea makes for good conversation. (If Abby were still there, she could have assured Ziva that Mercury is no longer retrograde, and the tea will not be necessary.) Tony does not agree.

"You are not getting coffee, much less beer or tintilla, for two weeks. The tea has no flax."

"It doesn't have much smell, either, and I'm guessing not much taste."

"Considering how you feel about other healthy foods, the no-smell-no-taste angle should be a relief." She sits. "I have some good news, if you would like that first."

"Good, or good?"

"The second...I think. Your inflections still confuse me sometimes."

"Then save it for a day when we're not having this conversation." He takes a sip and makes a face. "Sex and the City would tell you that giving a man wheatgrass tea is pointless."

"I do not know what that means, but I suspect it is rude."

"You're the only woman in the world that doesn't like Sex and the City."

"And you are the only straight man with the commemorative set."

"You're wrong there. Sex and the City is a treasure trove of information about the female mind. I love women who love knives. I'll take any help I can get." He gets serious. "We agree that I am the nosiest man in the world."

"We are agreed."

"The nosiest man in the world needs to hear about it. What happened that day. From you."

"I want to tell you, Tony. But I am worried that if I do-"

"I'll use it as an excuse to go on a multi-year bender of self-pity. Understandable under the circumstances. But if you don't tell me I'll just imagine it."

"And knowing your imagination, that would probably be far worse. So I will tell you, but I will tell you something else first. I missed you. Not just that day. But even this last week, when I knew you would be all right and when you were not far away. I missed you. We missed you."

She takes a sip to steady herself and hopes that Ducky is right, that she will say the right thing. "We need you, Tony. You, not the perfect Tony you think should exist. And who would probably be insufferable if he did exist. We can survive without you but we do not live without you. Remember this when your bender calls."

His mouth twitches and she says, "If you make a joke I will kill you."

"Joke?" He seems surprised. "I wasn't going to joke. I mean, that's an As Good as It Gets, you-make-me-want-to-be-a-better-man kind of compliment. I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"I am not so stingy as that. You don't say such things often either."

"Really? I don't? Maybe I don't talk as much as I think I do. Anyway, duly noted."

And so she tells her story as best she can, as if she were giving a statement to a policeman. She does not look at him while she speaks, and he does not interrupt or ask questions. Above all she does not want to cry in front of him, and she doesn't, even when she tells him about the hour in the field and the hours afterwards.

When she is finished, he takes her hand. "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

"Tony, it is not your fault."

"It doesn't matter whose fault it is. It's just—that's a terrible day for anyone. Especially alone. Thank you for telling me."

"Perhaps someday you will return the favor."

"Maybe. But my story isn't nearly as interesting. Nothing happens in the middle reel."

A cargo plane passes over them. Tony says, "The port call must be over."

"Not yet. They make way on Friday."

He smiles. "You're catching the lingo. At least some of it."

She smoothes down his hair. She had refused to bring any of his hair goop to the hospital. She likes it like this, springy but still soft. He does love to be petted, and on a day like this, when he is not half as strong as he wants to appear, touch reaches him in ways that words do not. She wonders if somewhere in there is a fond memory of someone else—perhaps the mother he never speaks of?—also trying to make his wayward hair lay flat. Or perhaps it is the absence of any such memory that makes it powerful now. "I am going to make you chicken soup for dinner."

"We've gone from pity sex to pity soup."

"It was not pity sex. And it is not pity soup. It is very good soup."

"I know. I married you for the matzoh."

"Hmmpf. You married me for the bada-boom bada-bing."

"Not just the bada-boom bada-bing, although it is spectacular. You know, you really do make me want to be a better man."

"I want the man I have. I want you here with us. I want things to be normal again, Tony. I want to be at home again. I want us to be happy the way we were before. That is I want."

"Yeah," Tony says. "That's what I want too."

That night, for the first time in her life, Rebecca DiNozzo is anxious to go to bed. She has been planning it for days, choosing what pajamas to wear, what story is to be read to her, what song is to be sung to her. She is too excited to enjoy it the first time, so it must all be done over again. But after that she is content to be tucked in and have the light turned off. When Ziva looks in on her an hour later she is asleep.

And then it is time for them to go to bed. Ziva has been longing for this moment and dreading it, fearing that it will tell her something bad about the future. It is ordinariness she craves, the round of sleep, love, food, work, talk that has been their placid life in Rota for the last thousand or two days. As she sits on the bed, she notices the same blue towel, now clean and impersonal, hanging from the door. She is overwhelmed by both fear and relief, and she is again afraid that she will cry and just make things harder for Tony.

But ordinariness—the everydayness of love—saves her. "Tony, don't scratch like that. Your stitches could come out."

"It's not the stitches. They shaved around the incision. The hair's growing back in and it itches. Like you wouldn't believe."

"They shaved you?" She brightens. "Is there any chance they shaved your butt?"

He smiles. "Well, at least you're back to normal."

He turns out the light and they settle in to their familiar places against each other, as they have for the last thousand or two nights. Ziva thinks: We will be better than fine. For her it is the beginning of the end of the bad thing.


	32. Chapter 32  Not for sentimental men

32 This is not a job for sentimental men

Gibbs stays for another week after the others have gone back to DC. He finds that he mostly likes DiNozzo's young agents. They are perhaps a little too eager to copy their boss, as they are all well-groomed, well-dressed, and well-shod—more so than Gibbs could ever think appropriate for a federal agent. They also seem to share Tony's aversion to appear to be doing any work, and there is an air of lazy banter that hangs over the squadroom. The one exception is when Becks is in the office; she is obviously at home there, and the agents are all sweetly respectful or playful with her. Mark Green shows her pictures of his dog; Win Hancock folds complicated paper airplanes for her; Bill Burns plays Indian poker with her; Tawan Allen teases her about OSU. They all avoid the topic of Sarah Cosgrove, now also back in DC. But the work does keep getting done, and they grind through a heavy if routine round of work stemming from the port call of the carrier group.

On Gibbs's last full day in the office, Mark Green is yawning as he types up the night's notes, Bill Burns is dividing his time between a fresh crop of BOLOs from Interpol and a Sudoku puzzle, and Win Hancock is down at the range. Tawan Allen is just lounging by Gibbs's desk. "Something you need, Agent Allen?"

"Any idea when Tony's coming back?"

"He's supposed to be at home another week and then on half-days for another two weeks. Knowing DiNozzo, he'll be back on Monday. What did you really want to ask?"

"Is he going to lose his job over this?"

Gibbs smiles. "Two weeks ago Leon Vance had one of those frame things on his desk. Though I'm sure it's gone now. They'll stop using the base as a transfer point for a while. But in the end Vance will go back to using Rota. And DiNozzo won't lose his job. Vance knows his man."

"What about Sarah?"

"No decision yet as to whether charges will be filed. If no criminal charges are filed, there'll be a hearing to determine whether to fire her. But you know this, Agent Allen."

"Do you think Tony will stand up for her?"

"Do you mean will he give a favorable statement? Yes, he probably will, and he'll do it for the wrong reasons."

Burns and Green are no longer doing a good job of pretending not to listen. Allen says, "She was one of us. And I think Tony's right. I don't think there was any criminal intent there."

"If DiNozzo gives a favorable statement for Sarah, it won't be because he honestly believes she should be in this job. He knows she shouldn't—and he knew it before any of this happened. But he's sentimental." No one could save Kate Todd, and Tony, Gibbs knows, would try to save Sarah for that reason. "You want to do this job well, Agent Allen? You do the job, you don't get personally involved, and when the job is done, you go home. This is not a job for sentimental men."

Burns finally puts down his pencil. "I realize I don't have your experience, and I realize that you're an incredibly successful agent. And I really appreciate the chance we've had to see you at work. But I still think Tony's pretty good at this job, sentimental or not."

"No, Agent Burns, Tony DiNozzo is damned good at this job. He won't miss the bad guys. But he'll underestimate the trouble that good people and good intentions can cause."

"Well," Burns says, "I guess a policeman could have worse flaws."

"Yes, he could," Gibbs says. "Agent Burns, have you caught the people running that chop shop?"

"Not yet."

"Well, get on it, then."


	33. Chapter 33 But if Gibbs were sentimental

33 But if Leroy Jethro Gibbs were a sentimental man

Years ago, before he'd hired Tony DiNozzo, Gibbs had been told by Tobias Furnell that the FBI didn't hire cocky young men. They turned out disappointing. Furnell had conceded that there was the occasional wildcard, but there were too few to make them a good investment overall. Gibbs, who had once been a cocky young man himself and was somewhat offended, had been forced to agree with the statement.

He'd hired DiNozzo anyway.

Gibbs was never fooled by the act, and he'd always known there was more to Tony than the shiny, handsome exterior of the prototypical cocky young man. There were too many things that Tony never mentioned, and Tony generally didn't shy away from mentioning things. Gibbs had been intrigued by the fact that Tony would never give a straight answer about why he'd ended up in law enforcement, and he'd never doubted that this particular young man had a real desire to learn the job and do the job.

But the exterior was damned near perfect. It made Tony DiNozzo an amusing partner, watching him work his way through the female population and the suspects, flashing his quarterback's charm along with his badge, getting knocked off balance by a new and difficult job, only to right himself again. He had a wolfish vitality and an optimism that seemed indestructible. He overestimated himself routinely but kept getting better. He struggled with Rules 10 and 11, but any agent worth his salt did the same. Gibbs had thought that Tony would be the wildcard.

And then it went bad. Tony had gotten involved in Jenny Shepard's lunatic pursuit of René Benoit, getting himself entangled in hopeless love affair in the process. Then he'd had the bad luck to be a bystander at Jenny's willed death. After that he'd gone to pieces, slowly. There were flashes of what the cocky young man ought to have matured into—Somalia, particularly, where he had been both clever and brave in a production that only Cecil B. DiNozzo could have pulled off. But mostly it was decay, and Gibbs thought Tony's unrequited love for Ziva was just another sign that he was on an unstoppable slide. Gibbs had always thought highly of Ziva but he'd believed she was far too guarded to ever yield to any serious romantic impulse, particularly one for a man as directionless as Tony seemed. Gibbs had seen Ziva as yet another wall that Tony was battering himself against. Gibbs had begun to wonder when he'd be fishing Tony out of the Tidal Basin—or, worse, the Potomac.

Watching Tony crumble had been one of the hardest things in his career, second only to losing Kate Todd. Some of it had been guilt: Gibbs knew that, if he hadn't retired, Tony could never have gotten caught up with Jenny Shepard. Gibbs hadn't figured out what was going on until it was too late. And Gibbs, functional mute, had no idea how to stop the slide.

But there was more to it, though Gibbs isn't the sort to admit it to himself. _Bad things weren't supposed to happen to Tony DiNozzo_. He was supposed to be the wildcard, the cocky young man who would go through life without taking a serious blow. Hiring DiNozzo had been a kind of wager that an older, sadder, once-cocky young man had made, a wager that someone would get out of this life in one piece. It was a wager that Gibbs appeared to have lost. The loss and the waste angered and saddened him in ways he couldn't acknowledge, much less explain.

In the end, though, Tony had pulled himself together, and he'd done it the way Gibbs thought a man should—on his own. When Tony had announced that he was leaving in a week for Rota, Gibbs had made no effort to stop him. There had been no fond farewell. Gibbs isn't much for farewells anyway, as he's had too many of them, and he'd been afraid of saying something that would stop Tony from taking his best chance.

And Tony's turned out to be the wildcard after all. The sad man at the end of the squadroom got off his ass, snagged Ziva David, made himself the daddy of loving families at home and at work, and ended up running Leon Vance's precious Rota shuffle. Gibbs hasn't seen enough of Tony in these weeks to measure precisely how much of the old optimism remains, but a man that hangs onto a moving car that long knows he has an awful lot to live for.

Gibbs doesn't have much doubt about how Tony's future will play out. Ziva had seen Tony at his lowest and gone with him anyway. She won't give up on him now. Tony's children will grow up indulged and adored, late for school but not forgotten in hotel rooms or used as weapons. His young agents will learn to carry themselves and do a competent job, and will go out into the world remembering their first boss fondly. And as long as Vance is around, Tony won't end his career in Rota. The ever-coachable quarterback has a boss who will always play him to his strengths and won't misuse him. DiNozzo won't ever be director, and he shouldn't be, but someday he'll be pretending not to work in Naples or San Diego.

All this is deeply satisfying to Gibbs. But he's still a functional mute, and he no more wants to get all huggy with DiNozzo than he had with Stan Burley. DiNozzo doesn't just represent the cocky young man that Gibbs had once been. Tony is a particular phase in his life, his job. Gibbs had ten years under his belt when he hired Tony. He had given up his incredibly wrong-headed attempts to recreate his old domestic life and he'd accepted that his job was his life. And at that point Gibbs was confident—cocky, even—that he knew how to do the job better than just about anyone. He was confident too that he knew how to teach others to do the job as it's meant to be done. Tony belongs to a phase in his professional life that seems sharper than what came before it or what has come since. The investigations seemed more intricate and more important. The dangers seemed more pointed. The highpoints seemed higher. That phase is over.

That's not to say that he's ready for the retired list. Far from it. Gibbs knows that he, too, is still damned good at this job, and he is still damned good at teaching it, though after DiNozzo left he's hired good solid agents who learn the job and move on without making much of an impression. Still, a phase is over, and Rule 11 applies: when the job is over, go home.

And perhaps he is a little superstitious. Tony is the cocky young man who has matured into a good useful man and a happy one to boot. What's to be gained by going over old ground? Tony has succeeded mostly because of his own efforts, but there is always luck involved, and Gibbs has been visited in his life by some very bad luck. Another reason to leave Rota with all of this unsaid and to leave Tony to his new families.


	34. Chapter 34 You were the job

34 You were the job

Still, on his last day in Rota, Gibbs goes to the DiNozzo home and climbs the three flights of stairs. Ziva lets him in, looking flushed and pretty. Gibbs realizes that he's seen Ziva in many moods, but contentment has not been one of them. It looks very well on her.

It is a cool day, and the sliding glass doors are closed, but Tony and Becks are out on the terrace. Becks hikes the ball and runs to the edge of the terrace, Tony tosses her the ball, she does a victory dance, and runs back for a congratulatory hug. And the game starts over. Gibbs can remember afternoons like this of his own.

Ziva gives him a kiss and embrace. "We can never repay what we owe you for this, Jethro." She smiles. "I am so glad that Rebecca has finally met you."

"I don't have to ask how you're doing," Gibbs says. "You look like you've bounced back."

"We have had a quiet few days. Tony has no phone and Rebecca is getting very spoiled by the attention. It has been—very nice."

"Well, the no phone days are over. I'm here to drop off the new phone and the office keys."

"And to talk to Tony, of course," Ziva says.

"How's he doing?"

"I think he would very much like to be told that he is a bad husband and worse father and he will never be forgiven. But it is hard for him to stay in that mood with Rebecca around. Ducky says he will be all right eventually."

"Ducky's usually right."

"I would offer you coffee, but Tony still can't have any, and it seems mean to make it."

"What Tony drinks isn't coffee."

Ziva laughs. "So true. But as compromises go, it is not a terrible one to make. You've come at a good time. Becks and I are going shopping anyway." She opens the sliding glass doors and waves Becks in. "No," she says to Tony. "Stay out here. I'll send your guest to you."

Becks shows Gibbs her pink Swiss knife on the chain. "Abby says it's very cool."

"Abby is always right about cool," Gibbs says.

"We're going shopping for gameday. It's Michigan," Becks says. "At home."

"Your daddy ever tell you about the Wisconsin game?"

"23 for 30, two touchdowns passing, one rushing." Becks shrugs. "One interception."

"Even good quarterbacks throw interceptions sometimes."

"That's what Babbo says. You gotta shake it off."

"That's good advice. You remember that."

Ziva grimaces. "We have to find something that will substitute for chips and beer. It is going home day."

"Homecoming, Mommy," Becks says.

"Tony likes root beer," Gibbs says.

"Really? Root beer? He never mentioned that. Rebecca, say thank you for the knife and good-bye."

Becks smiles her big DiNozzo smile and opens her arms. Gibbs takes a kiss and a hug. "Be careful with that knife."

"I never go anywhere without it."

"Good job."

Gibbs goes out on the terrace. Tony gestures vaguely. "The base and the bay are out there…somewhere."

"Don't worry, your base is still there. Here's your phone. Vance says that if one more Disney movie gets downloaded your service will be cut off permanently."

"Vance doesn't miss much. But Becks has an iPad now. She won't need my phone anymore."

"Someday," Gibbs says, "you're going to have to tell her that you're not actually Secretary of the Navy."

"Someday she'll figure it out on her own. Sit down for a minute."

"I have a plane to catch."

"The Gulfstream won't leave without you. Sit down."

Gibbs sits.

Tony says, "I don't suppose it would be possible to get my belt back."

"It's in the evidence lockup at the Navy Yard. You know how Abby feels about maintaining her evidence."

"It was the belt with the knife in the buckle, damn it."

"Your daughter can lend you a knife."

Tony laughs. "I'd have to wrestle her for it, and I'm afraid I'd lose." He turns the phone box over in his hands a few times. "Jenny offered me a team in Rota a long time ago. After you came back but before I was too deep into the Benoit thing. I turned it down. When things got bad I used to think, man, I could be in Rota right now. Isn't it ironic?"

Gibbs waits.

"Okay, Alanis Morrissette was a long time ago and you were probably never a fan. I know I owe you a lot for this. We owe you a lot. Thanks for coming, Jethro."

"Leon Vance didn't give me much choice."

Tony whistles. "Wow, way to kill the mood." He turns the box over a few more times. "You would have come anyway, whatever Vance wanted. Did you really think it would be that easy to avoid this conversation? I have to ask you something."

Gibbs waits. Tony finally puts the box down. He asks, "You've been doing this a lot longer than I have—the boss part. Did I cause this?"

"No."

"That was quick."

"I knew it was coming."

"I didn't like him. I didn't try to like him. And I fired him."

"No. DiNozzo, why do you ask questions if you already know you're not going to take the answer? You didn't cause this. You ran into a bad guy. End of story."

"Maybe I should have tried harder."

Gibbs shakes his head. "Tony, you were as unhappy as a man could be in Washington. You didn't turn into a murderer or a kidnapper. He's a bad guy. You noticed. You just didn't realize how bad, and for that you'd need ESP."

"I guess I'd still fire him, but I wish I'd kept better track of him." Tony sighs. "It's Sarah. I didn't protect her."

"Yeah, I figured that would be the real problem. She's not Kate Todd, Tony. The two situations aren't the same."

"But I know you still think about Kate, Jethro. Isn't there something you wish you'd done differently?"

"I wish things had turned out differently. But she was a good agent, Tony. She had a strange blind spot about Ari. Was that enough to let go of a good agent? I didn't think so then. I still don't think so. But it might have saved her life."

"Would you have let Sarah go?"

"I don't know. You know better than me whether she was a good agent. I wouldn't have let her go just because she reminded me of Kate Todd. There's only so much you can do to protect people, Tony."

"I could have warned Sarah about Hamilton. Been more clear about why I let him go."

"And she could have trusted your judgment. She chose not to. Look, Tony, you like bringing your family to work and bringing your agents home. That's your way and it's the best way for you. You don't like Rule 10 or Rule 11? You don't have to follow them. But there are always costs no matter how you do this job. You have to figure out for yourself how to live with that. We don't do this because it's easy. We do it because it has to be done."

"Ziva says I lack balance."

"I don't know if it's balance. You were never good at figuring out what was and wasn't your fault. Or knowing when it was time to let it go."

"Yeah…about that, boss."

"Don't apologize."

"Rule 6, sign of weakness, I know. But I wish I'd done a better job of it. Leaving, I mean."

Gibbs, exasperated, says, "Ducky complains about the no-apology rule because he thinks it's a license to be an asshole. It can be. Haven't you been listening? Everyone makes choices. If you make them honestly, you stand by them. You don't apologize."

"That rule—hell, half your rules-don't recognize the fact that the rest of us sometimes have mixed feelings."

"Would you give up your life here to be back in the squadroom?"

"Of course not."

"Then you made good choices."

"So it's more of a Rule 18 situation."

"You have nothing to be forgiven for. Let it go. Rule 11."

Tony sputters. "So I was a _job_?"

"Tony, for a while, you were the job."

It will be some time before Tony looks back on this conversation and understands how much Gibbs is saying. Still, he's not quite ready to let it go. "Ducky's not always in our guest room, you know."

"You have a guest room but not a basement." Gibbs stands up. "Vance is going to want the Gulfstream back someday."

"We could name the kid after you." Gibbs rolls his eyes. After a moment Tony says, "Maybe I'm not the only one who has trouble figuring out what is and isn't my fault. What part of the cost I'm not supposed to pay."

"Let it go, Tony."

"Okay." He follows Gibbs into the house. "I'll let you show yourself out if you don't mind. The stairs are still hard for me. But I do have one more question."

"DiNozzo."

"I've seen toy knives like the one you gave Becks in airports. But you didn't go through an airport, did you? They don't sell them at the commissary either."

This time Gibbs's laugh is genuine and unforced. "I never thought you were incompetent, Tony. But it was time for you to go." He tosses Tony the office keys. "My door's still unlocked."

Tony catches them. "Duly noted, boss."


	35. Chapter 35 The Watchtowers of Rota

A/N: My deepest thanks and appreciation to all who have taken the time to read and comment on this story. You have made this an amazing experience for me.

35 The Watchtowers of Rota

These three things are the constants of Leroy Jethro Gibbs's life: Crime, people who talk too much, and Leon Vance's puckish sense of humor. Knowing that Gibbs cares nothing about the Gulfstream and would in fact be happier in a canvas seat on a cargo plane, he has arranged for Gibbs to fly home in solitary splendor on the Navy's fanciest toy.

Gibbs has no interest in the electronic thingies, but the minibar is nice and the view unobstructed. From the air Rota is flat and undistinguished, a jumble of low narrow buildings and twisting streets. But the base is recognizable for its airstrip and docks and the string of silver-grey ships unspooling from its bay. He remembers again his impression of Rota Naval Station, the harmony underlying the appearance of disorder, the coordination necessary to keep the great machinery running, the meshing of disparate parts, the predictability of the result of all those great efforts.

Gibbs of course is not given to sentiment. But even steely men have their sentimental moments and sentimental men have their steeliness, and without both, there would be no way to keep the machinery going, no mounting the watchtowers so that the Rotas of the world might go on dozing. Not that Gibbs would put it that way. He does think it's a fine sight.

Even without the presence of chips and beer in the DiNozzo household, OSU trounces Michigan. For once, Ziva enjoys gameday: she watches The Sound of Music on the iPad. No one notices her singing.

On Monday Tony goes back to work, ignoring the both the one-more-week-off and the two-weeks-of-halfdays prescriptions. He writes a letter for Sarah Cosgrove. The content makes Vance chomp his toothpick in two, but Vance sees to it that no charges are filed against Sarah, and she is allowed to resign from NCIS in exchange for her testimony.

Going through the chop shop photos, Tony notices—as a result of his frequent, longing perusal of BMW literature, whatever its language—that _Werke_ is misspelled as _Worke_ and concludes that the equipment is probably counterfeit from the clandestine factories around Naples. NCIS Naples is able to give the Rota office some assistance, and eventually they track the carjacking ring to a new location in Gibraltar. The case is turned over to civilian authorities, and it's NCIS Rota's last act in the matter.

Strangely, Ziva does not take this as a sign that Tony should have a BMW. But the little red clown car is in the NCIS Navy Yard lockup, along with Tony's belt-buckle knife, his favorite loafers, and his Tag Heuer, and no one in the David-DiNozzo household wants the clown car back. They compromise on a Jetta. At least Tony can get into it with fewer contortions.

Life in the office and at home settles down into everydayness. Ziva buys Tony an iPad so that he'll stop "borrowing" Becks's, and he uses that to display her photographs. Ziva sends the spare digital frame to Gibbs.

One day Tony opens his locked drawer and realizes his spare shirts and socks are gone. It amuses him to think of his cashmere socks and his pima cotton polo and his Prada pinstripe dress shirt now in some hamper in Arlington, in the company of Walmart T-shirts. He knows Jethro would have come anyway.


End file.
